John Cook is a left-wing troglodyte who works at the cultural rot site and tax evasion vehicle Gawker. Previous to today, Cook was perhaps best known for writing a Dec. 19 obituary of famed jurist Robert Bork in which the latter was described as “a terrible human being, and no one should grieve his passing” – he also had stints at Radar.com, Yahoo and the Chicago Tribune.

He’s known for attention-whoring pieces which push the envelope on left-wing media narratives which have already been established by more “reputable” sources.

And along those lines, Cook today has published a 446-page list of gun owners in New York City, entitled “Here Is a List of All the Assholes Handsome Law-Abiding Citizens Who Own Guns Some People in New York City.”

Cook apparently knows each one of those gun owners and can attest to the individual character of each.

From the piece…

Last month, the Journal News sparked a firestorm of protest when it published a mappable database of every licensed gun owner in Westchester and Rockland counties, north of New York City. The paper obtained the data—which New York state law explicitly and unambiguously demands be made public—through open records requests. The reaction was swift and furious—gun rights and privacy advocates published the names and addresses of the paper’s editors in retaliation, and the paper (ironically) hired armed guards to protect against threats.

One weird reaction came from TV wraith Ann Coulter, who told Fox News’ Sean Hannity last week: “If we’re producing lists of gun permit owners, I want them for Manhattan. I want to know how many rich liberals with their body guards have gun permits.” You’re in luck, Ann. I happened to have just such a list in my filing cabinet. Here it is.

Below is a 446-page list of every licensed gun owner in New York City. I obtained it from the NYPD two-and-a-half years ago via a Freedom of Information Law request. Because the NYPD is more interested in raping and/or eating ladies and spying on Muslims than it is in honoring public records law, the list contains only the names, and not the addresses, of the licensees. (If you’re curious, here’s what section 400.00 of the Penal Law of New York, entitled “Licenses to carry, possess, repair and dispose of firearms,” has to say on the matter: “The name and address of any person to whom an application for any license has been granted shall be a public record.” The only way to get the associated addresses from the NYPD, as the law requires, would be to take them to court, which no one has apparently done.)

Cook singles out Hannity, Fox News chief exec Roger Ailes and several other known Republicans for criticism as a retort to Coulter’s suggestion that the rich Manhattan liberals who own guns are hypocrites.

At the end of the piece, he offers this…

Here’s the full, searchable, NYPD list. (And for the record, they are not all assholes. Some of them need guns for legitimate reasons for their jobs, like providing security for assholes.)

Cook also taunts the victims of the Journal News’ attack on gun owners by saying that because the gun permit list in New York has been a public record for years there is nothing offensive in attempting to intimidate them by blaring their names and addresses to the world…

In any case, it’s clear that many of the Rockland County and Westchester County gun owners who are outraged at having their addresses plastered on the internet have had those addresses plastered on the internet for years without it causing a problem. And if anyone wanted to really stir some shit up, they’d grab those Who’s Packing databases and throw them up on Google Maps.

This, naturally, caused an immediate reaction on Twitter…

And then there was this…

To which Cook responded…

…and was promptly set upon by several Tweeters…

Someone then tweeted an address supposedly belonging to Cook, and he then confirmed that it was with a tweet (which is a mistake; why admit something you don’t have to?)

He didn’t get a lot of sympathy for that…

Cook may be whining about the reaction, but of course he’s getting what he was looking for in the first place – namely, the generation of traffic and attention at the expense of people who never did anything to him.

Lots of people can play that game, of course.

By the way, this is John Cook…

And yes, he’s as big a candy-ass as he looks. His bio on Twitter contains this, whatever it means: “Standing offer for shithearts: Let’s work it out over a Pepsi.”