Gun owners, particularly concealed carry permit holders, carry for a reason. They tend to be passionate advocates of the Second Amendment, and we hope they are paying attention to this breach. Why or that they carry is nobody’s business but their own, it is their right. The Putnam team did an admirable job of explaining the data breach and seemed to be candid about what information was stolen. They then tried to diminish the significance of the data loss by noting that only a fraction of the names released contained Social Security numbers, a critical component to identity theft. The fact that the only reason more Social Security numbers were not released was because the department simply didn’t have them, was not lost on USA Herald.
Mistakes, hacks and failures are a part of life. We don’t expect Putnam to be a Cyber Security expert personally protecting this data, but we do expect him to hire people who can. Regardless, it is not that occasional failures occur that is the problem, it’s how we react to them that defines us and separates real leaders from the posers. We will take Putnam at his word that his cybersecurity review will be meaningful. We trust Putnam here to work seriously to protect this data, not for any reason other than it is politically smart and necessary for him to do this as the gun crowd is such an important and active political constituency in the GOP.
