Missouri State Police Gave Concealed Carry Permit Holders' Info to Feds

In the process of Missouri’s Senate Appropriations Committee investigating worrying aspects of the state’s new driver’s licensing system, they learned that the Missouri State Highway Patrol twice gave a database of concealed carry permit holders to federal authorities.

When questioned by committee Chairman Kurt Schaefer on April 11, Missouri State Highway Patrol Col. Ron Replogle admitted “his agency had turned over the data.”

The information was passed to the Social Security Administration Office of the Inspector General in Nov. 2011 and again in Jan. 2012. Replogle claims the information was encrypted and the discs holding the information were destroyed.

“[The feds] said no names were retrieved,” Replogle said. “They do not have those names. They did not disseminate that information,” he claimed. He also stressed “all that information has been destroyed.”

The investigation into leaked personal information began after suspicions arose over new drivers license rules requiring citizens to bring in numerous personal documents–including concealed carry permit information–to be “scanned and retained.” 

Replogle said the names were turned over to “cross-check… names on the concealed carry list with [the federal] agency’s list of those with disabilities attributed to mental illness to find possible evidence of fraud in the system.”

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (D) has been denying that “concealed weapons permits were turned over to a ‘magical database’ for federal agents to ‘mess with.'”