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Man Orders TV On Amazon, Gets Shipped Assault Rifle
First time accepted submitter InfernoApple writes "Seth Horvitz, a Northeast D.C. resident, thought he had ordered a new high-definition television a few days ago through Amazon.com from a third-party merchant. When the package arrived yesterday, however, Horvitz opened the oddly shaped box to find something completely different. Instead of the flat-panel TV he had bought to enjoy with his wife, who is pregnant, Horvitz opened the long packaging to discover a Sig Sauer SIG716, a high-caliber, semi-automatic assault rifle capable of mowing down, well, just about anything."
He obviously was buying the TV so that he could hoist it a few stories above the ground and kill whatever poor sucker stood under it when it drops. Amazon just knew him so well from his previous purchases that he'd rather just have a rifle!
Instead of TV package contained high-powered assault rifle.
Would not buy again.
It's just a misunderstanding, officer. I ordered an issue of Big'uns!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
How is his wife's pregnancy relevant?
"Yesterday, I got a gun for my wife." "Pretty good trade, don't you think?"
I want to know what kind of retailer carries HDTVs and assault rifles? Maybe Best Buy should adopt this idea, TVs, guns and chicken!
tonyaldo.com
Somewhere, deep in the desert, a hidden meth lab got a nice new TV.
Dear Secret Service, I do not know the above poster. We just hang out here.
i defy anyone to "mow down" anything with a semiautomatic rifle. get a grip
You misunderstood. According to the summary, the weapon is capable of mowing down pretty much anything all by itself. This is similar to news reporting of SUVs causing horrible accidents.
Cars don't cause accidents. Guns don't kill people. IDEs don't write bugs.
The SIG716 is not an "assault rifle" and you won't be "mowing" anything down with it. It is a conventional semi-automatic rifle that can be legally owned just about everywhere. Also, it is in a large caliber that makes it better suited for hunting than for rapid fire.
If the guy had been shipped a functionally equivalent hunting rifle with a classic wood stock there would not be as many ninnies getting the vapors over it. Unless Amazon has never made a shipping error before, this is a non-story.
In this case it is 7.62x51, roughly identical to the .308 Winchester.
That is legal for deer hunting in all 50 states, unlike the weaksauce 5.56x45 used in actual assault rifles.
So he didn't actually get an assault rifle, semi-auto hunting rifle that happened to be painted black, had an adjustable stock for comfort and rails for attaching a scope, bipod and other accessories.
For those unaware, an assault rifle is a firearm capable of firing in a fully automatic mode, as opposed to semi-automatic or single-action. Furthermore, the most common round used in assault rifles is a pittance, it is a .22 caliber bullet (granted with a lot more power and better aerodynamics than the .22 LR you shoot in Boy Scouts). But even with all that it is considered pitiful, not much more than a varmint round.
Here in Pennsylvania it is illegal to hunt dear with a .223 caliber because it is not considered powerful enough to ensure a clean kill. In fact, those evil high caliber rounds are often half the size of a hunting cartridge.
So where does the term "high power" stem from? Not the cartridge itself. But the capacity of the firearm. Essentially, you had a 45 caliber semi-automatic designed by the Revered John Moses Browning. This held about 8 rounds. They're big short fat stubby rounds. 8 rounds of firepower was two more than the average revolver. The Revered than creating the Browning Hi-Power using a much smaller 9mm round. The result was a capacity of 15-19 rounds. Hence hi-power simply mean greater capacity, often related to small, weaker, less powerful bullets.
In fact, the current .223 round used in M16/M4/AR15 (semi-automatic version) is essentially considered the smallest, weakest, bare minimum rifle round that can ensure a reasonable expectation of success. Compared to what gramps used in WWII or worse, WWI, it's laughable - unless you're shot by one of course.
Came to post this. The article throws about "hi power", "mows down about anything", without ever specifying the caliber. 7.62x51 (not x56) is a standard NATO round, about 10% less powerful than a 30.06.
And as someone above said, the gun is probably worth twice what the TV he ordered is.
What's a "high-caliber" assault rifle?
A contradiction in terms.
An assault rifle is A) fully automatic (with a fire selector that includes either full auto or burst) and B) fires an intermediate rifle cartridge, meaning not high calibre.
If it's high calibre, but still a military rifle, it's a battle rifle. If it's intermediate calibre, but limited to semi-automatic fire, it's just a semi-auto rifle.
You can't legally buy assault rifles, or select fire battle rifles for that matter, if you're a civilian living in a first world nation. Doesn't matter what you might see in the news that says otherwise, go try it at your local gun store and see how far you get. If it's got automatic fire capability, it's a military weapon belonging in the hands of soldiers, and cannot be owned by your local gun nut anymore than he can own a live grenade.
Referring to anything that looks remotely dangerous as either an assault rifle or machine gun is a good indicator that the person doing the labelling knows fuck all about the subject at hand. "Assault style rifle", which is the weasel word term for weapons like the one in TFA, is about the same thing as a car that looks like a racecar, but drives like a sedan; legal, fancy looking, but boring under the hood.
(Disclaimer: I am Canadian. The second amendment down south is none of my business either way. I own no guns. I am firmly in the "guns belong in the hands of professionals" category. Anyone busting out the "sure, that's what an NRA drone wants you to think" in response to my post presumably didn't read the post script.)
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Just one vote.
rewriting history since 2109
Is that article originally from the Onion?
Geez, they're just lucky that they're still alive. That very big gun, capable of mowing down, well...just about anything, could have leapt out that box and killed her unborn child!
I mean, unloaded guns, still in packaging, have killed untold numbers of unsuspecting hipsters.
This story was on the local Washington DC NPR affiliate yesterday, and they did a much better job describing the problem -- it was quite obviously a UPS bungle, underneath the address sticker on the package, there was *another* address sticker, with the address of a gun shop in Maryland, which confirmed that they had indeed ordered this thing, and were waiting for it. Amazon doesn't appear to have done anything wrong in this case.
The part that I thought NPR did poorly was, both they and the guy who was the subject of the story kept going on about how dangerous the situation was, and I thought that was kind of over-blown. It was left on his porch for a while, which put it at risk for theft, but the gun was, as far as I can tell, not loaded, and there was no suitable ammunition anywhere around. So, it seems to me that, practically speaking, it was no more or less dangerous than a similarly-sized shovel or crowbar, independently of the presence of pregnant women and other vulnerable people.
When someone shows up with the right ammo, *then* it's dangerous. But not before.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
It was, NPR reported that his address label was stuck on top of one for the gun shop it was intended to go to. Pretty much every one of the articles on this story also neglects to state that you can't have firearms shipped to your house unless you have an FFL.. You have to go pick it up at a gun store and go through a background check.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
You have this exactly opposite. Like all gun grabbers, your facts are based on hearsay and idiot web blogs. There is a dictionary definition of assault rifle, and it includes full auto or burst mode. Full auto guns come in a variety of types, full auto only box fed or belt fed is a machine gun. Semi-automatic box fed is not a machine gun, shoulder fired full auto is not a machine gun either. The defunct ban attempted to ban appearances only, pistol grip, box magazine, rails, collapsible stock, etc. and you have swallowed it all hook line and sinker.
NPR reported that the label under this guys address is for a gun store in PA. This is really poor reporting. The washington post version lacks this detail as well, as well as any reporting that you can't ship firearms to a persons home unless they have a FFL.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
You and a lot of posters are confusing "assault rifle" with "assault weapon", a term invented by the Brady Campaign to mean "scary-looking gun."
An assault rifle is simply a fully automatic, low-caliber rifle. An assault weapon, on the other hand, was legally defined as a gun with too much black plastic (pistol grip, barrel shroud, folding stock, others.)
DATABASE WOW WOW
for a TV, so they sent him a rifle.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
If you read TFA, it looks like it was a mistake by UPS, so why even mention Amazon? (And Amazon doesn't allow listing of guns anyway.) The article says the box was addressed to a gun dealer in PA ... not an error by Amazon or the vendor, but by the shipper.
Though I do wonder what was in the other box. The photo shows a big shipping box with the rifle box on top of it, there's still another box in the shipping box ...