Man Orders TV On Amazon, Gets Shipped Assault Rifle 666
First time accepted submitter InfernoApple writes "Seth Horvitz, a Northeast D.C. resident, thought he had ordered a new high-definition television a few days ago through Amazon.com from a third-party merchant. When the package arrived yesterday, however, Horvitz opened the oddly shaped box to find something completely different. Instead of the flat-panel TV he had bought to enjoy with his wife, who is pregnant, Horvitz opened the long packaging to discover a Sig Sauer SIG716, a high-caliber, semi-automatic assault rifle capable of mowing down, well, just about anything."
Pregnant? (Score:5, Insightful)
How is his wife's pregnancy relevant?
I would use it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
I want to know what kind of retailer carries HDTVs and assault rifles?
Wal-Mart.
Re:Sounds like win-win to me! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:anti-gun hyperbole (Score:5, Insightful)
i defy anyone to "mow down" anything with a semiautomatic rifle. get a grip
You misunderstood. According to the summary, the weapon is capable of mowing down pretty much anything all by itself. This is similar to news reporting of SUVs causing horrible accidents.
Cars don't cause accidents. Guns don't kill people. IDEs don't write bugs.
Re:How dangerous, really? (Score:4, Insightful)
unless it can go full auto... (Score:4, Insightful)
... it ain't an ASSAULT RIFLE!
Re:Sounds like win-win to me! (Score:5, Insightful)
> Wouldn't the somewhat recent SCOTUS ruling for citizens to own guns in DC, kind of put this to rest as to gun ownership in the city?
Not exactly. When the SCOTUS makes a ruling progressives like, especially if it legislates a whole new legal superstructure from the bench they could never dream of enacting through the legislative procress, then the SUPREME COURT has spoken. The ruling may as well be delivered on engraved stone tablets brought forth by Moses himself (ok, scratch the heeb.. don't like those anymore, brought forth by the Lightworker himself) and are unquestionable. To even ask questions is to bring your patriotism into question instead.
On the other hand, when it is a ruling they don't like, not so much. DC has pretty much ignored the Heller decision. Last I heard there is still no licensed dealer in the city and it is still illegal to import one from elsewhere. So good luck exercising your newly reinstated 2nd Amendment RTKBA and it won't change until we get a different Senate and POTUS.
Re:Not an assault rifle (Score:4, Insightful)
Why mention Amazon? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you read TFA, it looks like it was a mistake by UPS, so why even mention Amazon? (And Amazon doesn't allow listing of guns anyway.) The article says the box was addressed to a gun dealer in PA ... not an error by Amazon or the vendor, but by the shipper.
Though I do wonder what was in the other box. The photo shows a big shipping box with the rifle box on top of it, there's still another box in the shipping box ...
Re:Top ten Obama lies about Romney (Score:3, Insightful)
No, no, wait, mods! This is clearly on-topic! Just look:
1. This person wanted to buy a TV for his wife, but instead got a high-powered semi-automatic rifle. See where I'm going with this? He'll kill his wife with the gun by accident!
2. This sort of shipping mishap must have been done by someone so inexperienced with the English language to mess up an order that badly. It can be assumed, therefore, that this job was outsourced from whatever third-party reseller being used in this case. The chief of said company must have made that decision.
3. This is a very embarrassing gaffe, overseas or not.
4. Amazon's been under attack recently by states demanding they collect sales taxes. And the TV that was supposed to be delivered would've been quite heavy. Combine those together, and the middle class will be crushed, and there's taxes!
5. Whoever did this will need to be hunted down and fired. Unfortunately, this will result in a McCarthy-esque witch hunt in the company until everyone responsible has been found.
6. Ownership of such a gun may not be a crime in DC, but we still need to figure out where it came from; it may be a felony in whatever country this was shipped from.
7. The customer couldn't abort the shipment before it got to him. Or rather, he had no reason it would need to be. But, he certainly wouldn't abort the order if he could use the gun to defend someone being raped.
8. Most likely, this entire affair was due to some penny-pinching MBA, most likely one from a prep school where they have no real concept of how the real world works. As a result, the outsourcing issue mentioned above, ultimately leading to this erroneous shipment.
9. The company probably wants to keep this a secret. See the part about it being a major gaffe.
10. This is obviously racist, too. I mean, would they accidentally ship semi-automatic rifles to BLACK PEOPLE?!? No. This was shipped to a white guy due to racial fears.
See? It all ties in to the article at hand. This certainly wasn't some political nutjob vomiting up a copy-and-paste checklist in the desperate, DESPERATE hope that someone, ANYONE will care about what he's saying.
Re:Sounds like win-win to me! (Score:3, Insightful)
Nah, the full faith and credit clause only counts when progressives want it to. Gay marriage in one state forcing the other forty nine? Sure. Drivers license? Why not. But a concealed carry permit? Oh no, each pair of states has to engage in a complicated reciprocal licensing deal. Medical, law or other professional licensing? What? Are you crazy? The license to sell pillows or mattresses and put the little 'do not remove under penalty of law' tags on? You must be nuts, gotta comply with that one in each of the thirteen states that have those laws. All of them as different as they can make them to better protect their local manufacturers... well these days importers.
Amazon? (Score:4, Insightful)
FTA:
UPDATE, 10:45 a.m.: Ty Rogers, an Amazon spokesman, declined to say what the company is doing to remedy the situation.
Why should Amazon have to do anything in the first place? This was a shipping error by UPS and has nothing to do with Amazon. Amazon wasn't even the one directly selling the TV, they just listed the page for one of their third party sellers. UPS should be the company to remedy the issue by getting the man his TV. I suspect the person the gun was intended for is eager to get his $2500 gun opposed to the $400 TV he likely got anyway.
Re:Sounds like win-win to me! (Score:4, Insightful)
After watching the video of how the Slidefire works I would have to imagine it will be made illegal or put under the same restrictions as any automatic weapon within a few years. It's really just another way to arrive at an automatic rifle and get around the ban on buying them.
The Slidefire and similar stocks have been around for a few years now, but I haven't found any evidence that their legality has been brought into question yet (won't stop the busy-bodies from trying, I know...).
As for making it illegal, well... might as well criminalize physics. [wikihow.com]
Re:Sounds like win-win to me! (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no 'right to privacy' in the Constitution
Oh, I wouldn't be so quick to declare that:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The way I see it, they decided it would be impractical, if not impossible to list every possible right that needed protection (and to what degree), but they wanted to guard freedom in a general sense, including the freedom of a person to be free from all substantial arbitrary impositions by the government.
Just because the founders didn't choose to explicitly enumerate that right, that doesn't mean that they believed the government should be able to arbitrarily limit your choice of medical procedures, etc. Without a measure of privacy (which they sometimes took extraordinary measures to achieve), they would have never been able to mount a revolution, from that continuum, I'm pretty sure they would have been fond that ideal.
Re:Sounds like win-win to me! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm surprised. I would have thought you'd have led with Brown v. Board of Education as your poster child for "bad bad liberal bad socialist bad bad judicial activism - only bad bad liberals and bad bad socialists do it"; but then, I don't suppose you have that much intellectual honesty. So, as you suggest, we'll take Roe v. Wade as "Data Point 1". You say:
Actually, as the 9th Amendment states:
In other words, It doesn't "have to be there" (enumerated) to exist. That would be YOU, being 100% completely wrong. Simply because "privacy" (whatever that might mean) is not explicitly stated as a (specific, named) Right under the Constitution, does not mean that it does not exist, nor should it be disparaged simply because it is not named by name. That's what the 9th Amendment says. Get it? Get it? It's the same kind of "just because we didn't mention it by name..." language as used in the 10th Amendment. I won't go into the 14th Amendment "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" part of the argument because I know how much the "Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned." part enrages the "hold my breath until I turn blue" Congressional conservative crowd. Besides, that's Reconstruction, not actual Bill of Rights. Point is, you're wrong: it don't have to be stated, and it don't need an Amendment for "privacy" (non-interference by government in people's private lives) to exist and be enforceable.
What really makes me laugh is how worked up conservatives get about Roe, especially when the (stated) gist of the Court's decision was "It's none of the Government's goddamn business, let the individual person decide". To me, it's the height of hypocrisy (and howlingly funny) how loudly conservatives want the Government to stay out of everybody's business, except when they want the Government to dictate things (usually legislated morality) they (the conservatives) want to shove down everybody's throat. It's always different when the shoe is on the other foot.
On to Citizen's United and Heller.
In the first place, I'll let you have Heller, simply because I know (and acknowledge as being a Good Thing) that the 2nd Amendment (and the Constitution) in general, pretty much explicitly state that the government of this country (which was founded on armed revolution) shall rule at the consent of an armed populace. Again, I think that's a Good Thing. I like to reserve that right on principle, besides, the way things are going, I might have to exercise it. Besides, just because YOU brought it up doesn't mean I have to champion it. If Heller makes you thump your chest in victory, you go right ahead.
Citizen's United
Um, no. It (Citizen's) goes a damn sight farther than that. In the first place, it declares that MONEY is SPEECH. Which it ain't. Obviously.