Ravenwood - 11/10/03 06:00 AM
Can you imagine what would happen if your credit card company told you what you could or could not purchase with their card? What would you think if your credit card agreement contained a stipulation that you couldn't purchase alcohol, rent a room in Vegas, or use it to pay your tab at an all-night strip club. Well, internet payment service, Paypal, makes users agree to just such stipulations. According to their Acceptable Use Policy, paypal customers cannot use paypal to buy any firearms or firearms related items including ammo, ordnance, and most antiques and replicas. Paypal apparently offers no explanation (other than the assumed liberal bias) as to why they limit your ability to use their payment service for legal purchases and products.
It just opens an amusement where you buy all your ammo at yahoo online stores with paypal.
Posted by: Ron Hardin at November 10, 2003 9:00 AMI use PayPal on my site. They can put all the restrictions they want on it -- I just transfer the $$$ into my bank account, and buy guns with it.
Fuck 'em.
Posted by: Kim du Toit at November 11, 2003 5:03 PMI guess I'll just have to send the 5 Wilson Combat #47D 8rnd mags I bought off of Gunbroker.com back. Oh, and the ankle holster from eBay, and those CZ83 mags, and the Commander hammers, and 40in brass 30cal cleaning rod, and etc.
Posted by: analog kid at November 11, 2003 9:36 PMIf I was in charge of Paypal, I might consider doing the same. Some 15 year old buys a gun off the Internet using PayPal and they've got enormously (ill-founded, but none-the-less present) bad publicity and quite possibly a lawsuit for enabling the illegal sale of a gun.
You and I both know that there should be no legal standing for such a ridiculous lawsuit, but that doesn't stop the lawsuits, does it?
Posted by: R. Alex at November 12, 2003 1:54 AMIt's all about balancing risk vs. reward. Someone killed by a drunk driver could sue Ford for selling the guy the car, or Visa for financing the guys evening out at the bar. But you don't see them limiting what people can do with their products or services because of the off chance they might face a baseless lawsuit.
Paypal is a publicly traded company and they have a responsibility to their shareholders. If I owned their stock (which I never will now), I would have serious doubts about a business plan that includes mitigated the tiny risk of frivolous lawsuits at the expense of a lot of revenue.
Considering that most of the anti-gun lawsuits are targeted at gun companies to drive them out of business, and also considering that the fed is working to make those suits illegal (as many states have already done), it seems silly to worry about it. I don't think there have been too many instances of lawsuits against third parties that aren't actually in the gun business.
In short, from a business standpoint it doesn't make any sense. It literally doesn't add up. This is political true and true, and that doesn't feed the bulldog when it comes to the stockholders. They should take management to task for this.
Posted by: Ravenwood at November 12, 2003 6:16 AMThis is addressed to the fool R. Alex who obviously is as usual mis informed. There is no way a 15 year old could buy a gun on the internet in any way. All gun sales have to go through a licensed dealer. They are shipped to the address on their license and that dealer then has to do paperwork to sell the gun when the individual comes in to pick up the gun. It is quite obvious that the dealer will be able to see that individual is 15 years old and he'll never get the gun. If people would become informed from reliable sources instead of listening to CNN and such non sense bias media, the would know these things.
Posted by: roseco at February 3, 2004 4:20 PM(c) Ravenwood and Associates, 1990 - 2014
