Net News: September 2001

SAR Staff — Sat, 01 Sep 2001 01:51:56 +0000

By Jeff Zimba

Being very short of facts but ridiculously long on emotions, there seems to be no bottom to the barrel where the antigun crowd pulls out their lame arguments against firearms ownership.

It seems as though every year, in their desperation, they create another problem that needs immediate legislative attention. To accompany the newly invented “National crisis” new buzzwords and catch phrases must be invented as well. This is the process that brought us such fictional items as “Cop-Killer Bullets”, “Semi-Automatic Assault Weapons”, The “Plastic, Undetectable Handgun”, and the “Gun Show Loophole”.

One of the entrées on the crisis du jour menu today is the dreaded “Internet Gun Sale Crisis”. Some of our legislators, either through misinformation or just sheer ignorance, believe that because business’s and individuals post firearms for sale via the internet that there is a massive proliferation of illegal gun sales that never existed before. Rather than just stepping back and examining the foolishness of this claim, many jump feet first into “crisis mode” and demand restrictive legislation.

Lets shoot this latest nonexistent crisis full of holes. First and foremost, posting a firearm for sale over the internet is no different than placing a classified ad in your local newspaper. When a firearm is sold, whether the seller is an individual or licensed firearms dealer, Local, State and Federal firearms laws must be adhered to. The medium the firearm was advertised in has absolutely no bearing what so ever. To believe any different is laughable.

When a firearm is sold to an individual in another State, the seller has to ship it to a Federally licensed firearms dealer in the area of the buyer. The buyer then picks up the firearm from the licensed dealer, and the transaction is treated just like any other new gun sale. All Local, State and Federal laws necessary for the dealer to comply with are applied as usual. This is it. No problem, no loophole, and certainly no crisis. As a matter of fact, nothing has changed at all.

All the internet has done for firearms sales, is to expand the advertising to a larger audience. All the rules are exactly the same. Try and imagine for a second, the foolishness of applying different laws to specific forms of advertising. Think of the questionnaire: Question 1: If you learned of this firearm through your local dealer, check box 1 and proceed to question 2. If you learned of this firearm through your local classified newspaper, check box number 2 and proceed to question 2. If you learned of this firearm through word of mouth, check box number 3 and proceed to question 2. If you learned of this firearm through an ad in a national classified ad, check box number 4 and proceed to question 2. If you learned of this firearm through an ad on the internet, check box number 5 and proceed to question 2…

I have several friends who have purchased and sold firearms through internet auctions. I have found some pretty good deals out there myself. Most deals I have heard of have ended with satisfaction to both parties as far as price, condition, shipping, etc. Like anything else, it is probably a good idea to try and deal with those who have a good track record or reputation. I would advise checking on the “feedback” of any potential buyer or seller as it seems to be a fairly accurate indicator of past business deals.

Below are a few auction sites that came up when I typed “Gun Auction” on the search engine “Dogpile”. The only one I have had any personal experience with is Auction Arms, and I never had an unpleasant experience with them. This is not an endorsement of any of these auction sites, just a listing to get you started in the right direction. Happy buying and selling.

Bid For Guns

~~http://bid4guns.com/index.cfm~~

Auction Arms

http://www.auctionarms.com/

Ebang

~~http://www.ebang.com/~~

Gun Broker

http://www.gunbroker.com/

Armsbay

~~http://www.investorseek.com/auction/index.html~~

Gunhouse.com

~~http://www.gunhouse.com/~~

Guns For Sale

http://www.gunsforsale.com/

GunShow Auction

~~http://www.gunshowauction.com/~~

For The Hunt

http://www.forthehunt.com/

This article first appeared in Small Arms Review V4N12 (September 2001)

Net News: August 2001

SAR Staff — Wed, 01 Aug 2001 01:31:31 +0000

By Jeff W. Zimba

Just shut-up and watch the movie. I would be willing to bet that most of you reading this magazine have heard those words from your “significant other” while pointing out that the guy shooting the revolver just fired 14 rounds without re-loading. How about when the bad guy’s M11 SMG is captured and used by the good guy to fire it’s “9mm Cop Killer Bullets” through the 1” thick steel blade of a bulldozer and kill the other bad guy? When loudly proclaiming it is impossible, did you get “the look”? How about bursting into laughter whenever a criminal uses his shotgun and it blows up an automobile or helicopter, something that could never really happen off the silver screen? Well, you are not alone.

If you are educated in a particular field, firearms in the above case, mistakes and bloopers are easy to pick up on. If you don’t have a background in a particular area, things you see and hear may not raise any red flags, and in many cases may even seem believable. While we can find humor in this while watching television and movies, it is also a problem we desperately need to overcome. You see, many people in our society have forgotten that movies and television shows are for entertainment, and not for education. This may have come from too many parents using the television as an electronic babysitter, or may have come from not spending enough time talking about the difference between movies and reality. Either way, we seem to have a problem in society today differentiating fact from fiction.

The first time I noticed this was actually a problem was several years ago. I owned a retail gun shop and a few kids stopped in on their way home from school. One of them was telling his buddy about some armor piercing 9mm bullets that could shoot right through a bulldozer blade. This kid had obviously watched one of the Lethal Weapon movies and had believed what he had seen. I told him it was just a movie, but he insisted that those bullets were real and he knew it. I wish this kid was the only example but there were several cases, and many were adults.

This blur between fact and fiction would seem quite harmless except it reaches well out of the movie realm and far into society. One quick look at Handgun Control, Inc’s. literature will show its ill effects. They used to brag about their important role in banning something they called “Cop-Killer Bullets”. The particular ammunition they were making reference to was only available to law enforcement in the first place, and had never actually been involved in the homicide of a policeman. Many Police officers actually felt that their life was being placed in jeopardy by HCI as they were publicizing the fact that many of them did wear body armor, something that was not widely known in the early 1980’s. Still, fiction being more interesting than fact, the Brady Bunch found legislators to buy into their story.

It is on this note, that I will give you my Website pick of the month: http://www.movie-mistakes.com. This is a very cool website that lists movies and their mistakes, and solicits new finds from the readers. At the time I last visited the site it listed 1,408 films with 8,680 entries.

Check it out and send them any mistakes you have found while watching movies. And, oh yeah, when you are in front of the silver screen with the wife or girlfriend, just shut up and watch.

If you find an interesting site our readers may be interested in, drop me an e-mail at Production@wtvl.net.

This article first appeared in Small Arms Review V4N11 (August 2001)

Cop-Killer Bullets – Small Arms Review

Net News: September 2001

Net News: August 2001