FYI.
– House Bill Would Ban All Internet Ammunition Sales (Breitbart, Jan 16, 2013):
In their latest rush to further emasculate the Second Amendment, many on the Left are taking aim at the Internet.
Of course, illegal online sales of weapons and ammunition should be stopped–though the practice isn’t nearly as prevalent as the left would have you believe.
But progressives are also looking to ban legal online sales through a bevy of new gun control resolutions, including H.R. 142, which “would ban Internet or mail order ammunition purchases.”
Meanwhile, the state of New York just passed a ban on Internet “assault weapon” sales.
Progressives act as though the move to end all online weapons transactions is just that simple–wave a gavel, pass a law, and it’s done. Just like with guns themselves–declare a gun-free school zone, and all schools will be gun-free.
But they are not always such regulatory optimists.
Remember SOPA-PIPA? The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act–the bills that ham-handedly sought to rein in rampant online property theft-for-profit. Stolen music and movies being sold on the Web is a costs the creators of these works billions of dollars each year, and these vastly overreaching bills were an attempt to address it.
I was opposed to the bills – they went far too far. But I remain an ardent supporter of the premise behind them–the protection of private property.
Progressives also opposed SOPA and PIPA; their reasoning, based on the claim that such laws were irrelevant as they would ultimately fail to stop online piracy–when juxtaposed with their confident intent to block online weapons sales–induces whiplash.
But they’re at least against the thieves themselves, right? Not quite, unless it’s a competitor who is allegedly stealing from them.
The left asserts we can’t do anything to stop illegal online theft, but that we can unilaterally and completely stop legal online weapons sales.
In this case, it’s not a technological question–it’s an ideological one. They bizarrely defend the actions of internet pirates, but not those adhering to the protections of the Second Amendment.
So they will claim impotence on the former, while doing whatever it takes to impinge the latter–including assuming vast new authority over the Internet.