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Robert Horne, the editor of a small town North Carolina newspaper, resigned on Tuesday after asking the sheriff for publicly available information about gun permits and then receiving a flood of hate mail. Horne tells media blogger Jim Romenesko that the publisher of the Cherokee Scout newspaper didn't pressure him to quit, rather he made the tough decision "so the Cherokee Scout can move forward" from the small scandal that it's been saddled with the past few days. The hate mail certainly didn't help. Oh, and Horne also plans to leave the state in the next few months.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. Horne made the request last week, and despite state law, the Sheriff Kevin Lovin denied the request and posted Horne's letter on Facebook. He included the caption, "My Office will continue to support the constitution and all amendments including the Second Amendment." As the sheriff surely anticipated, the letter sparked outrage in the community, and only three days after the Horne's request, Cherokee Scout publisher David Brown published an absolutely fawning apology not only to the paper's readers but also to Sheriff Lovin who, Brown said, "had the best interests of the people of Cherokee County at heart when he denied the request." This was a sharp departure from the tone critical of Lovin that Brown had taken in a letter to readers the day before.