The Firearm Blog

I nearly fell out of my seat when I read this. From the an article at The Age (emphasis mine):

In January, John Hanke, the director in charge of Google Earth and Google Maps, hit back at the claims, saying terrorists would still carry out their attacks with or without Google’s help.

“I don’t really think it’s tipping the balance in favour of the bad guys,” Hanke said.

“The evilness is in the philosophies and the desires of those that want to do evil. They will use the tools at hand to do that, whether it’s throwing a Molotov cocktail, or shooting a rifle or using some piece of technology as part of the process.“

Wow! I had to read it twice just to make sure it was not mis-reading it. Google has taken a very dim view on gun related websites in the past. For example, Google advertisements are banned on websites selling firearms.

This actually is the perfect example of “XYZ don’t kill people, people kill people”. Most people love Google Earth and Google Maps, and they love them despite the fact that they are probably used by terrorists planning attacks.

There is currently a debate in the UK about Google Earth showing a top secret nuke submarine base. It sounds to me like there is a bureaucratic problem where government workers don’t want to / can’t pass on military base coordinates to Google, but on the other hand don’t want the images showing up.

The Google Street View photo taking van ran over a deer in Rush, NY while capturing every moment of the encounter on their 360 degree camera system.

The images have since been removed by google.

Hat Tip: Reddit via. The Daily What via. Gizmodo.

Google is hosting a huge archive of millions of Life magazine images since 1750. I thought I would see what interesting gun photos I could find.

Winchester 1890 pump action rifle. © Time Inc.

Actress Donna Drake taking aim with a rifle on the balcony of her home, dressed in a two-piece swimsuit, her dog lying on a cushion nearby.

Location: CA, US
Date taken: 1942
Photographer: Peter Stackpole

Hollywood is just not the same anymore. Imagine the media frenzy if Scarlett Johansson was spotted with a rifle on her roof!

Full sized photo here.

Guy waterskiing with revolver. WTF?

Swiss farmer’s rifle with bandolier. Taken 1941. Presumably on hand in case of a German invasion.

Ordnance shop at Skoda Munitions factory. Too little too late. Less than a year later the factory would be producing arms for the German war machine.

What not to do with a gun.

SayUncle recently wrote here and here about how Google refuses to allow Google ads on gun blogs because….

the content of your site is largely focused on firearms, the site is not a good fit for the AdSense program.

I just realized that Google itself advertises on it’s own ’site largely focused on firearms’! The Google Groups rec.guns group!

Here is a screenshot of Google ads on one of the rec.guns posts:

If this isn’t a double standard I do not know what is.