GOOSE AND GANDER

I once saw a cop getting prosecuted for doing an illegal act on the job. The fellow he had accused of a drug crime was innocent of that crime. He had been framed.

The former defendant's attorney was sitting next to me in the audience, and as we were getting up to leave after the guilty and sentence pronouncement, the lawyer said to me  and cryptically uttererd "Goose and Gander".

I didn't know what he meant, and  said "What?"

"Goose and Gander, counselor. What's good for the goose is good for the gander", making obvious reference to the cop being prosecuted for wrongfully prosecuting a citizen.

I'm reminded of that when I hear the story about the newspaper up north that wanted to "out" the legal and permitted gun owners and carriers to, I suppose, shame them into submission of some sort of agreed gun control.

Instead, me thinks they knowingly provided legions of criminals some great "first strike" addresses to burglarize when the crooks need to steal some guns from law abiding citizens. Apparently, since public safety personnel are among these folks, at least some correctional officers (and I would expect prosecutors, cops, judges, etc to be among gun owners and carriers in this area of the country) outed so now some ex-cons with a grudge can not only hunt down the guards they likely detest but know there is a bounty of weapons perhaps to be had in successful conquest.

So a good friend sent me a link to a blog that  OUTED  the employees of the newspaper and all of their personal information.

And the big, bad newspaper didn't like it's management and employees and all of their social media links and addresses and phone numbers to be readily accessible in one place for all of the upset gun owners who had been targeted by the paper.

Oh no. The newspaper did not like being outed one little bit.. They hired armed guards. They moved employees to hotels.  And much more.

I find it somewhat interesting that the tone of the NY Times article linked above does not share too much sympathy with the plight of the newspaper in this case.

Bravo, I say.

Too bad the gun owners targeted by the paper can't have armed guards gratis of the newspaper or a hotel paid for on the newspaper's dime to escape when their home gets burglarized by someone who used the newspaper's information to try to steal some guns. It's certainly foreseeable and I wonder if under New York laws it would be legally actionable under some tort theory of law?

Crooks have long used newspaper information to commit their crimes. The obit section is fodder for those burglars who are unfraid of an eternity in hell and commit burglaries of homes of wealthy deceased while the family is at the service. Of course, the obit provides all the information as to when the services will be and even in the pre-internet days, when I recall this crime being somewhat frequent, it wasn't hard to find where the wealthy and prominent lived.

Of course, the above funeral burglaries are at no fault of the newspaper, who are mearly a conduit for information in those cases, as opposed to intentionally revealing the information that they did with law abiding gun owners.....

And so I'm reminded...goose and gander.

Or perhaps as James Bond might say, "Done. Well Done".