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Facebook Wants To Block Illegal Gun Sales
Nerval's Lobster writes "Most of the time, Facebook allows its users to hawk goods or solicit donations on Pages or Timeline postings, comparing such activity to placing a physical note on a bulletin board at a supermarket. Now it plans on regulating users who rely on this method to sell what it calls 'regulated' items, which includes firearms. 'Any time we receive a report on Facebook about a post promoting the private sale of a commonly regulated item, we will send a message to that person reminding him or her to comply with relevant laws and regulations. We will also limit access to that post to people over the age of 18,' Facebook announced as part of the new rules. The social network will also prevent users from posting any sort of items 'that indicate a willingness to evade or help others evade the law,' which means no offers to sell firearms across state lines or without a background check. Presumably, Facebook will have filters in place that allow it to scan for such content. Facebook is a private network, of course, and not (despite its ubiquity) a public utility — meaning it can do whatever it wants with regard to Terms of Use. But that likely won't stop some people from complaining about what they perceive as the company overstepping its boundaries."
First, how do you even define an "assault weapon." An "assault rifle," as defined by Wikipedia is capable of select-fire (AKA machine gun). Those are 100% not OK to just sell, as you need a $200 federal permit, and the approval of a local law-enforcement agency.
However, the term "assault weapon" is more fuzzy, at least according to Wikipedia.
What I absolutely love is how the definition (to borrow from Wikipedia again) includes:
Wow. Adding a safety feature and cosmetic features changes the categories. This makes as much sense as taking a street-legal car, painting it red, adding a rear spoiler, roll bars, and suddenly it is a race car that is not legal for street use.
Seriously, all of this talk about assault weapons gets tiresome. If somebody was shooting at me, the color of the rifle and the presence or absence of a pistol grip would be the last thing on my mind.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
And we, gun owners, are free to criticize FB to do so.
That definition did not work out so well when applied to people. Nothing makes me think that it will work much better here.
After a shooting, the government tries to make us safer by restricting the rights of the 99.999% of the people who did nothing wrong.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
However, the term "assault weapon" is more fuzzy, at least according to Wikipedia.
Wikipedia has it right, in its own "being unbiased in the wording" way.
"Assault Rifle" is a technical term in warfare. It first applied to a particluar select-fire rifle short enough to avoid getting hung up when popping up through the hatch of a tank to fire at surrounding infantry (or otherwise going through tight spaces), and since has been applied to others with simiilar characteristics. This trades away some accuracy for rapid fire and rapid movement.
"Assault Weapon" is a term invented by antigunners and defined in particular laws, to confuse the population about proposed gun control laws by making them appear to be banning military design Assault Rifles when they actually ban a hodge-podge of civilian guns based on some arbitrary (and juristiction-specific) set of characteristics typically unrelated to any objective standard of danger or functionaity.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
He's not saying that. What he's saying is that it's hypocritical for politicians (and their minions) to have armed guards, and for us peons to not have the same means to protect ourselves. Even if all guns were confiscated, criminals would still have guns. That's why they're criminals - they don't obey the law.
I've always thought that somebody who has their own armed guards (politicians, celebrities, sports stars, etc) speaking out against firearms was hypocrisy to the extreme.
Oh, why do nearly all of the Federal agencies have their own armed officers now? Why have they been buying millions of rounds of hollow point ammunition? Why have they been buying sniper ammunition? Why does an FDA agent need a firearm? How long before they decide that they're the only ones who have firearms. Hmmm?
Stay in your country if you like it so much, and stay out of our discussions. You don't vote here.
I'm gonna be negatively commented out, but I disagree with that law. It has become too damn easy to create "felon" out of non-violent crime. Heck, you can become a felon over sheer copyright infringement, or because you were in the wrong place when you were 15 and got caught smoking marijuana... As a result, your constitutional right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness is made void, without any chance to redeem yourself.
It doesn't. The only thing a database provide is for gun confiscation by an authoritarian state. This objective is the real objective of nowadays anti-gun movements, complete disarmament of law abiding citizens. Cf. the behavior of the RCMP in Canada during the High River flood, they used the then-illegal former long gun registry to invade homes an cease guns. They are doing the same now with the recent prohibition of the Swiss Arm Classic Green, and the CZ-859.
It was also rather fun in the intro scene of the original Red Dawn to see the invading force get all the 4473 form to cease gun from citizens.
What we called today the "Wild West" was probably more civilized than some poor metropolitan area today... As for the gun ban argument, have a look to Australia and UK, whose rate of violent crime has never been so high, while they have utter strict gun law.
We should have laws for things that are inherently wrong, like murder. Owning a gun is not inherently wrong, and therefore should not be prohibited since the attempt to do to won't prevent criminals from getting guns illegally anyway.
No - laws should punish things that are actually wrong. Theft, rape, murder, etc. Anything that it is claimed simply facilitates the breaking of another law without causing direct harm itself should not be illegal.
In the terms of this site - the DMCA is wrong, because (as is obvious) the pirates are gonna pirate stuff regardless. The law only prevents legitimate uses.
Banning guns or complicating the process is wrong, because murderers are going to get guns and kill people anyways.
Put simply, laws do not PREVENT crime. Never have, never will. All they do is define what crime is, so that we can identify those that have done society wrong and punish them accordingly.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain