Of Pistols, Project Valour, and PayPal

For four years now, the Gunblogger Rendezvous has been one of the largest annual meetings of bloggers who follow and write about Second Amendment rights, firearms and firearm safety, competition, hunting and gun politics. The Gunblogger Rendezvous is sponsored by several companies and individuals in the firearms industry, as well as the bloggers themselves.

One of the things that the Gunblogger Rendezvous is doing this year is sponsoring a series of raffles, with all the raffle money going to Soldiers Angels Valour-IT. One of the prizes is a really nice ParaUSA pistol, donated by Kevin Baker, who writes at the popular Smallest Minority. Front Site Academy, which is a popular school for tactical and sports shooting also donated a four day training session worth $2000 as a prize for the online raffle. Soldiers Angels has set up a page where you can purchase the raffle tickets. Needless to say, these are very cool prizes and raffle tickers were moving at a very brisk pace. Then things hit a snag.

That snag would be PayPal. For those that don’t know, PayPal has long had a history of anti-Second activity. If you try and purchase a firearm, sometimes even ammunition and accessories with your PayPal account, and Paypal catches wind of it, PayPal will lock and shut your account down. Keep in mind, in order to purchase a firearm online, you still have to fill out a 4473 and pass a federal background check, just like you would if you would at your local sporting goods store. The firearm must then be transferred to a Federal Firearms License holder, who can then give the firearm to you. The FFLs will make sure all federal and local laws are followed, and they’re usually pretty good about it because they know they’re answering to the Feds if they screw up. Undoubtedly, this same process will be followed with the pistol being raffled off. You have to show you’re old enough to purchase ammunition when you purchase online as well. So there really is no reason for PayPal to shut down accounts like this.

Of course, none of that matters to PayPal. PayPal decided to not only shut down the raffle without warning, but shut down all of Soldiers Angels PayPal accounts, leaving all of Soldiers Angels with no online donation accounts during an online donation drive for twelve hours. PayPal only reopened their accounts when Soldiers Angels removed the PayPal buttons for the ParaUSA pistol and Front Site Academy raffles. Now the raffle tickets must be purchased over the phone or by payment through mail, and you can do that here if you’re interested, and I hope you are. Given what PayPal has done to hobble this raffle effort, Soldiers Angels Valour-IT is going to need as much help as they can get in order to make this a successful drive.

PayPal may have the right to do all of this, but it doesn’t make it an acceptable move on their part. Their Bloomberg-esque zealotry against gun owners has undoubtedly cost Soldiers Angels thousands, and they need to be condemned for it. If you want to let PayPal know what you think of their anti-Second policy and actions toward Soldiers Angels, their customer service line is (402) 935-2050, as always, be polite, be respectful, but make your voice heard.

H/T to Say Uncle and Sebastian for this story.

If you’d like to read more of doubleplusundead and his co-bloggers demented, foulmouthed scribblings, you can go here.

I tried to behave myself while guest posting here at RWN, can’t believe I made it this damned long without cursing.

Oh, hell.

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