… and a call for people to work on it.
The other day, I blogged about a smartphone app for boycotting firms that support SOPA and noted (I wasn’t the only one) that it could potentially be a powerful tool for boycotts of all kinds.
Well, who feels more strongly than gun owners about avoiding businesses who’d take away their fundamental rights? And who deserves more support than businesses that support our right to self defense?
An online acquaintance, Sandy Sandfort, has decided he wants to do something about that. He’s looking for people with the skills and interests to do the job:
1. Techies who could create the app
2. Techies who could create and maintain the database
3. Info gatherers to determine the status of companies (pro-gun, anti-gun, neutral)
A team would probably set some guidelines on making determinations about what qualifies as pro- or anti-gun.
Sandy envisions that developers and maintainers might split profits from sales of the app, but I’d be more inclined to think of this as a volunteer project, with the possibility of money being a plus.
I told him I’d help put out the word and put him in touch with interested folks. If you’re one of those, either email me at the special address for the purpose: boycottapp at hermit dot cotse dot net or put a note in the comment section. Give your correct email address where it asks; the address won’t show, but it’ll see it and pass it along.
While not exactly “on-topic”, many gun owners may appreciate this effort.
http://www.ignatius-piazza-front-sight.com/2012/01/09/front-sights-monday-blog-shall-issue-concealed-carry-for-california/
It might be good if the app let users determine what sorts of anti-gun policies they wished to give more weight to. Such as if a company bans carry in its stores, while supporting pro-liberty causes in general, or if it donates to anti-gun groups while having no “official position” on carry in its business locations.
I don’t have a phone with apps anyway, so I’m not in the potential market for this. Yet.
Good idea. There are always shades of gray. If all your options are anti-gun, there has to be some that are less gun-shy than others. I will kick it around with others. Maybe we will have a numeric score or a code for specific policies, both or something else. On your last point, we will almost certainly make the database available for viewing, on line. So you are not left out in the cold (and besides, I just have a dumb phone too). Thanks for your comments.
High tech shunning. Love it.
The NRA keeps a list as a service to the many requests of their members.
I wasn’t able to review the anti-SOPA list when I was made aware of it the other day. Javascript or something was keeping me from reviewing it, but I would presume someone would need to convert “Jodie Foster – Actress” into a list of all the UPCs of all her movies. Likewise for “Stoneyfield Farms Yogurt”
This would probably be pretty easy to do by scraping an Amazon searchand using something like Python + Mechanize + Beautiful Soup to extract out a UPC code. Then maybe crowd-source human fact checkers to do the fact-checking. (I’m a Python n00b but I sure can get my search-fu on.)
Github will host the code if the project is opensource.
I gotta wonder if the NRA themselves might want to sponsor the Android app development part of the project if they could promote and brand the finished app?
The only gunnie I know that writes Smartphone apps is Robb Allen.
Rather than an app, how about a web site which would (at least for the near term) be more accessible to a broader range of users? The only thing you’d really be missing functionally would be automatic geo-location. But a lot of privacy-conscious users have that feature turned off on their smartphones anyway.
I’m a software architect, and I’d be game to help.
I like this idea because I (unfortunately) live near a big city and have a wide choice as to who to patronize.
My brain just kinda exploded when I pulled this idea a little wider. Suppose you come to a store that said “No guns nor politicians allowed” and another store that said “We welcome guns and especially politicians” – which to shop at? 😎
So yes on the gray areas.
Shunning, however, is only partly effective if nobody knows you are doing so or why. It’s inconvenient, and one can see how it might actually be a bit hazardous at some point, but right now I make a serious effort to tell the proprietor of the establishment why I choose not to do business with them (I printed a card to give them) AND to let my friends know why I don’t enter that shop.
On the other hand, it seems always so much easier to complain or shun than to support those who respect our rights. When was the last time you went out of your way to check back and see if your complaint bore fruit? Or to offer some educational material to the manager? Ever invite him and/or the clerks out to the range? Ever express appreciation for a business that specifically welcomes the armed individual? There are many possibilities.
Just going away mad is perhaps not the best solution to the problem.