Bullet Tip Free Zones

To all eBay buyers and sellers – this auction is for you!!!

I have been an eBay member for over 10 years, having joined prior to April of 2007, long before the current crop of eBay Executives had even heard of eBay. At that time it was an open, free market but from the very beginning there were rules that prohibited selling illegal items. Everybody got along, and it was FUN to meet new people and buy from them or sell to them. Heck, more than once I have traveled to the eBay campus and participated in usability studies, trying to help eBay make their site better.

Then, suddenly, it became somehow wrong to sell firearms. The category was deleted and any auctions that cropped up in other categories were killed. Suddenly it became “illegal” on eBay to sell perfectly legal items in a perfectly legal manner, i.e. shipping to federally licensed firearms dealers for subsequent transfer. At about the same time as firearms were being banned the plethora of “patent medicines” started cropping up, everything from ointments that claimed to enlarge certain body parts to pills to make the enlargement last longer. Herbal remedies for everything, lack of sleep, loss of energy, you name it. All fraudulent, of course, but still being sold today.

I believe this was the first of many steps down the path of social engineering that eBay has chosen. Today they justify their recent clampdown with, “We have a Trust and Safety team which consists of more than 2,000 experts in online security and safety who are located around the globe.” But back then the Executive Team were at least honest and everyone knew that they were opposed to private ownership of firearms. Implying that their “online security” people have ANY firearms knowledge is like saying that a programmer knows how to run a business.

Further, their experts from “around the globe” are not relevant to America. I don’t really care what someone in Paris, or Lisbon, or London, Tokyo, or Cairo thinks about AMERICAN free enterprise. Just as I don’t care if they ban pork rinds in Saudi Arabia, eBay executives have no business listening to “global” input as it affects the US market.

Below is an exact quotation from the letter sent to me:

“We value an open and transparent marketplace; if items are legal to buy
and sell in an unrestricted manner we allow them on our site. However,
there are some items that while legal, may not be safe for our
marketplace. In these instances, our applicable policies go beyond the
law to ensure that our marketplace is safe.”

I would like to point out that the first and last sentence are obviously contradictory. You cannot value something, truly value it, and then not honor your own values. What this means is that eBay does NOT place any significant value on an open marketplace, they are simply giving it lip service.

I wonder what eBay does value. For example, do they value the educational fund that one store owner was building for his daughter by selling LEGAL parts? Do they care that they are taking that education from her?

Do they understand that one of the nations finest gunsmiths spent years designing and perfecting a firing pin that will SAVE LIVES by making rifles safer to fire and that he no longer has a “mass market” to sell his product? It is entirely likely that more people will die from “slam fires” that could have been prevented by the use of this improved firing pin. Does eBay care that because of their policy people might actually die?

I don’t know the answers to those questions, and quite honestly I wouldn’t believe any answer provided to me by an eBay executive.

So, here’s the “auction”. I would ask that there be only one bid, to make this a valid auction, and that bid be for one penny. ALL graphics are free to all. Please feel free to copy them and use them in your store as you shut down your operations. Use them in your final auctions, or wherever you would like.

Also, I would suggest that the many sellers currently selling firearms optics get ready to be shut down at any time as the scopes you sell MIGHT be used to convert a “hunting rifle” into a “sniper rifle.” At the drop of a hat a “sniper rifle” could be added to the currently forbidden “assault rifle” category. (Neither the govt. nor eBay can define what either of those rifles are so expect the worst.)

Current bid: US $31.00