New eBay regulations on "assault weapon accessories"

From an e-mail I got today:

Important Notice: Hunting Guidelines and Category Changes

New Guidelines
The following guideline changes, which limit what can be sold on eBay, will take effect June 8th, 2004:

The sale of any assault weapon-related parts or accessories will not be permitted (applies to all parts and accessories related to any firearm defined as an "assault weapon" by federal or California law).

The sale of any firearm receiver or firearm frame will not be permitted (whether complete receivers and frames, components and parts of receivers and frames, or "cut," "80%," or "partially complete" receivers).

Category Changes

In order to improve the ability of buyers to find your items, the category structure of the Hunting category has been expanded to include the creation of three separate categories for Gun Related items:

Gun Safety & Storage
Gun Parts
Gun Accessories
The Scopes, Optics, Taxidermy, Reloading Equipment & Vintage categories have also been expanded. For more information you may view the whole list of new categories.

Regards,
eBay

Considering that nobody knows what an "assault weapon" is, does anybody have the foggiest about what an "assault weapon accessory" might be?

http://caag.state.ca.us/firearms/regagunfaqs.htm

http://caag.state.ca.us/firearms/genchar.htm

Let the "...but, I REALLY WANT to be able to buy a grenade launcher on eBay for my hunting rifle!!!" whining begin.

n/t

stopping all those drive by bayonettings and grenade launchings!

this "nobody really knows what an assault weapon is but we who cream our jeans over them" might be the most tedious and dishonest.

and saw a guy selling a whole MAC-10 piece by piece

I could see the writing on the wall when they blocked my bid for Jim Bradys brain.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/remains.html

"Human Parts and Remains

Humans, the human body, or any human body parts may not be listed on eBay. Examples of prohibited items include, but are not limited to: organs, bone, blood, waste, sperm, and eggs. You may not include such items as a gift, prize, or giveaway in connection with an item listed on eBay. Items that contain human hair (such as lockets) as well as skulls and skeletons that are used for medical purposes may be listed on eBay".

Does anybody else see this as pre-emptive action in anticipation of the inevitable AWB sunset?

Ebay does have some pretty screwy rules with regards to "prohibited items" http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/items-ov.html

Although, up until now AW "accessories" (other than "hi-cap" mags), weren't prohibited; so liability can't be a valid reason.

Accessories? I could use a new set of slip covers and paisley print furniture for my M-4. :D

I wonder: what are the odds that the new rules for "assault weapon" parts will have any real effect on the range of goods that people buy and sell on Ebay?

Check out the health and medical section sometime, and you'll find tons of ostensibly prohibited, "prescription-only" devices for sale. It's always been that way, despite the full-page FDA warning right on the site. Nobody alerts Ebay on the presence of these items, because the only people who search for such things do so because they want to buy them, not complain about them. Ebay's stated policy, at least in this instance, appears to be more of a legal ass-covering and lawsuit-avoidance tactic than anything else.


Now, say they do ban "assault weapon" parts after June 8th. Aside from any questions about how seriously they intend to enforce their own policy, do you really think that many of the people toiling away at Ebay have a good working knowledge of exactly which gun parts are forbidden and which are acceptable? I mean, I'm still pretty much a newcomer to this whole gun debate, but one thing I noticed right off is that people who are for gun control tend to have little (if any) technical knowledge of guns. People who know what a given part is probably won't object to its being offered on the site (and therefore won't complain). And the people who would have objected to an offered part, probably can't, because they haven't a clue about its function or legal status (and not being into guns, the objectors won't likely be hanging out in the gun section in the first place).



Mary

Look at what I found.

http://search.ebay.com/bayonet-lug_W0QQsokeywordredirectZ1QQfromZR8

11 entries for super-duper, assault, killer bayonet lugs!

High capacity magazines (even if they are completely legal pre-bans) are generally removed from eBay within a few hours of their listing due to people reporting it as a rules violation.

I can think of someone around here who would lurk eBay looking for auctions to tattle on.

I wonder when the auctions I listed are going to disappear then...

But I did find a Ruger clip (or "magazine", I don't really know the difference, and the seller calls it a clip) that holds more than 10 rounds. It's been up for a couple of days and has seven bids on it so far. Currently going for less than twenty dollars.

Be interesting to see how long it stays on the site.

You know, if people continue to post these kinds of offers despite Ebay erasing them prematurely, then surely someone must be making sales somehow...


Mary

They use terms like "manufactured before 1994" and "this magazine can hold ten rounds" to skate around the eBay rules. You'll often see the image cropped so that you can't see the holes for the 11+ rounds on the mag.

improperly referring to a magazine as a clip? That's rule violation #1 here in the gun nut dungeon. If you don't know the proper terminology, then you have no right to talk about guns, or to suggest regulations. That has to be left up to the gun nuts in George Bush's right wing America, just like regulation of the oil industry has been left up to the oil executives.

that bans clips, that's not going to stop anyone from getting magazines is it? So you can see it's important to know the difference.

but they can't take mine 'cause I'm OK!

....that the Sniper Worshipers in this forum were making snotty challenges to gun control advocates to define just what constitutes a "sniper rifle," as if a definition was difficult to formulate. And yet in recent days, newly-acquired "sniper rifles" have been turning up, masturbatory-quality pictures and all, for all you guys to oo and ah at. No problem with definitions, evidently. I even saw a claim that a .270 couldn't be used as a sniper rifle---wrong caliber. What page of the Sniper Worshiper Handbook is that on?

I suspect the same thing is true of "assault weapons."

What characteristics does the "sniper rifle" have that the "hunting rifle" does not? Do you have any idea?

It's not a "snotty challenge"...the fact of the matter is that there is no difference.

.

Well you could look at the US Army's Field Manual, FM 23-10, Chapter 2, Section 1. It describes in detail the Army issue Sniper Weapon System.

Here's a link to it as well.

http://www.adtdl.army.mil/cgi-bin/atdl.dll/fm/23-10/toc.htm

What are you trying to do, keep the conversation on a logical track?

The McMillain stock...

The Jewell trigger...

The glass bedding of the action...

A bolt that has been trued and faced...

A Match grade stainless steel barrel with NO taper...And whatever the hell else military armorers do to those things.

So yeah, the receiver is the same, since that is all that's left.

Kinda like saying Richard Petty drove a slightly modified Dodge.

That you can't get done to your own bolt-action if you're willing to pay for it.

Lots of civilian cartridges have great military sniper potential. The .338 Laupua got adopted by the SAS for their long range stuff. I'm surprised the military hasn't shown more interest in the .30-378.

Frankly, if the DC Sniper had been using a standard hunting rifle with over-the-counter bullets, there would have been no wounded.

There's no operational range difference between a quality bolt action rifle with a good scope in a "sniper" cartridge caliber and a military sniper rifle that isn't a .50 cal. No one other than a highly skilled marksman who could be a military sniper has any business taking a shot at more than 300 yards. And out to that distance, unless your weapon is a POS and you stink, or you are using a cartridge that either can't get to 300 yards or can't kill anything once it gets there, you should handily hit the target good enough to kill it.

No matter *what* you are doing with the gun, beyond that range, it becomes an issue of optics, very solid aim and correctly estimating wind drift and drop.

I salute eBay for exercising its right to do business as it pleases, within the confines of the laws we must all live under.

There are plenty of other places to buy firearm parts and accessories.

Considering that nobody knows what an "assault weapon" is, does anybody have the foggiest about what an "assault weapon accessory" might be?

Very few people understand what constitutes an "assault weapon" indeed. Ignorance of same gets posted here daily. eBay can define the term "assault weapon accessory" any way it wants to. It looks to me like they are covering their butts.

The lawyers have spoken.

Next tempest in a teapot, please.

...but this specific rule change leads me to think that eBay's lawyers have warned them about the streets becoming soaked in blood because of the AWB sunset, and they are trying to cover their ass.

What the hell is this country coming to? I'm sure Hitler, Stalin, bin Laden, and Saddam would approve of this policy. Who's gonna protect us from the invading Roosky armies if we can't buy grenade launchers on ebay? This may be the end of America, freedom, and apple pie as we know it? Should we blow up the ebay HQ building ala Tim McVeigh to show them how dangerous it is to trample on our rights?

But grenade launchers really have nothing to do with "assault" weapons as they have been regulated as destructive devices since 1934.

VPC, MMM, and the Brady bunch would be proud to have you in their public affairs / propaganda department though.

...in place of "grenade launchers" in such diatribes. Big knives don't sound nearly as scary.

Never mind that grenades are heavily regulated as destructive devices. Who cares if someone has a 40mm barrel strapped to the underside of their rifle if they can't get the ammo for it?

The right wing nuts in congress kept asking informed questions like, "Are you sure he had real grenades? Maybe he just bought a bunch of them disarmed paperweight grenades". They were repeating the very words of Wayne LaPierre when they were saying that too.

Asking me to remember something doesn't exactly prove a point.

If they were mock hand grenades, they were harmless chunks of steel. If they were real hand grenades, they were highly regulated destructive devices which were illegal for him to own.

Either way, what does this have to do with 40mm tubes?

I'm SURE he didn't have any evil intentions.

You are somehow correlating David Koresh's ownership of a paperweight with the discussion on how grenade launchers make "assault weapons" more dangerous.

A "grenade launcher" is a tube. If the ammunition for this tube is illegal, then there's no reason for the tube to be illegal.

Grenades are highly regulated destructive devices. It is practically impossible for a person to legally own them.

ourselves against.
Sure. David Koresh was just a 'collector' of handgrenades. Just like Terry Nichols was just a 'farmer' and that it was perfectly legitimate for him to own tons of ANFO bomb ingredients. Randy Weaver? He just owned a 'few' guns, because he was a 'hunter'.
It never ceases to amaze me how far the gun lobby will go to defend the obviously seditious activities of their brethren.

n/t

eBay is just pushing business to gunbroker.com. I already shop both sites for firearms accessories. Now I'll just be spending less time on eBay.

Other than items they know are prohibited by your state's laws. So will a multitude of other resellers and manufacturers.

I'm not going to lose any sleep over eBay's bad business decisions. There's no shortage of competitors.

...but their parts are utter shit. I bought a few AR-15 mags and they were awful.

I stopped using their services when they banned firearms being sold FFL to FFL.

Fuck'em. They don't need or want my business or my money, I'll find somebody that does.

n/t

... :shrug:

I must have missed something.

Ebay has had a long-standing problem with firearms. Don't know why. The rules are the rules: transfers must go through FFLs, with the sole exception of gun-show sales in states that allow that. But that doesn't apply to Ebay.

And that's why we have http://gunbroker.com! I would use that but unfortunately there are so few gun stores left in the LA area that they have set a price of $100 to receive a firearm, if they are even willing to do it at all.

Really, they allow people to buy and sell cars, airplanes and all kinds of things. Why not guns?

But it's a business, their decision. The more restrictive they are the more business Gunbroker will get. Good!