“Gun Geo Marker” App Outrages Gun Owners
OutdoorHub Reporters 07.11.13
A new app for Android users on Google’s Play Store is causing controversy mere days after its release. Called Gun Geo Marker, the app aspires to create a crowd-sourced database of “dangerous guns and gun owners” that allows users of the app to locate “risks” in their neighborhood.
“The Gun Geo Marker operates very simply, letting parents and community members mark, or geolocate, sites associated with potentially unsafe guns and gun owners,” says the app’s product description on Google Play. “These locations are typically the homes or businesses of suspected unsafe gun owners, but might also be public lands or other locations where guns are not handled safely, or situations where proper rights to own or use any particular type of firearm may not exist.”
Users who download the app could potentially list any location or home as unsafe, a feature that has many gun owners worried that they may be the target of crime or persecution.
“Users can anonymously mark addresses and the owner can’t update or refute the allegation,” commented one of the app’s users in a review.
“This is a direct invasion of privacy,” wrote another reviewer.
Since the app first appeared in the Google Play Store on July 7, it has garnered well over 1,000 downloads and an equal amount of user comments. Of the roughly 1,200 reviews of the app, 1,170 gave it a one-star rating out of five possible stars. Many of the comments call for the app to be removed entirely from the Store.
Gun Geo Marker is the brainchild of developer Brett Stalbaum, who created the app to “address a social problem that is specific to his own country, political culture and constitution.” According to Gun Geo Marker’s website, the app is not designed for discrimination against law-abiding, safe gun owners, or for personal grudges. Users are guided to list only carelessly stored weapons, dangerous and untrained gun owners, and gun owners who violate the law. However, the site also warns that “there is no way for anyone to check the veracity of marked sites beyond living in and understanding your own neighborhood, and using your experience there to determine if a mark makes sense or not.”
Earlier this year, New York newspaper the Journal News caused a similar uproar when the paper published the names and addresses of thousands of gun owners. Using an interactive map not unlike the one utilized by Gun Geo Marker, the details of permit holders in New York’s Westchester and Rockland Counties were released online. The resulting flood of negative comments caused a stir in the state’s legislature. When the NY SAFE Act was passed into law, it included a provision which allows the state’s pistol permit holders to keep their information private. Previously, this information was available to the public under certain limitations.
As for the Gun Geo Marker, it is still available for download on Google Play for Android users at time of publication.
