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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — San Francisco Supervisor Mark Farrell Tuesday introduced an ordinance that would require firearms dealers to videotape all gun and ammunition sales and share ammunition sales data with police. The ordinance would require gun stores to keep all videos made of gun and ammunition sales for at least a year, and all records of ammunition sales for up to five years, according to Farrell.

Early on in the AMC series “Mad Men,” a young, ambitious Peggy Olson defends her ad idea to Don Draper, assuring him, “Sex sells.” He barely hides his disappointment before brushing this aside, “Says who? Just so you know, the people who talk that way think that monkeys can do this.” Don was on to something. New research suggests that sex, in fact, does not sell—and neither does violence. A recent meta-study by Robert Lull and Brad Bushman of The Ohio State University, published in the journal Psychological Bulletin, looked at 53 experiments to analyze the effects of sexual and...

Sales of the new Apple Watch have plunged by 90% since the opening week, according to a new market research report. Apple AAPL, -1.27% has been selling fewer than 20,000 watches a day in the U.S. since the initial surge in April, and on some days fewer than 10,000, according to data from Slice Intelligence, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based market research company. That is a sharp decline from week of the April 10 launch, when Apple sold about 1.5 million watches, or an average of about 200,000 a day, Slice estimates. Furthermore, two-thirds of the watches sold so far have...

Traditionally, purveyors of alcoholic beverages have focused a lot of their attention on the holiday season. But one major spirits company says the tide is turning, and summer is fast becoming an even more popular time of year to imbibe. Kate Pomeroy of spirits giant Pernod Ricard says there are two sides to the story when it comes to summer’s growth in liquor popularity. “There’s the traditional summer drinks - the rums, the tequilas, the vodkas,” she notes, “but then on the other side what we’re seeing is whiskey, which is a burgeoning trend across the whole category. Consumers are...

While iPhone sales remain strong, Apple Watch sales look limp. Pacific Crest Securities analyst Andy Hargreaves on Wednesday raised his Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone sales estimates, but trimmed his targets for the Apple Watch. Hargreaves has a sector weight rating on Apple stock, with a 12-month fair value of 139. Apple stock was up a fraction, near 126, in afternoon trading on the stock market today. Apple stock touched its all-time high above 134 on April 28. "Anecdotal evidence suggests Apple Watch demand is slowing quickly," Hargreaves said in a research note. "This dovetails with recent supply checks, which suggested a...

Until Amazon.com stopped selling them at 2:30 PM Eastern time today, sales of the Confederate battle flag had shot up 4,000% over the previous 24 hours according to this Business Insider story: People are snatching up the flags online after several major retailers — including eBay, Wal-Mart, and Sears — pulled them from shelves.The retailers banned the flags after last week’s shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, in which a gunman killed nine people in the historic black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.The man arrested in connection to the shootings, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, reportedly harbored racist sentiments and wanted to...

There is a run on Confederate flags underway at Amazon.com, after a media outcry successfully drove South Carolina leaders to attempt to remove the controversial southern banner from the state capitol grounds. According to the Amazon “Movers and Shakers” sales rankings in the past 24 hours in Patio, Lawn, & Garden merchandise, the flag is the top three slots. One 3×5 flag selling for $3.95 is up 2,305 percent, moving from a sales ranking of 914 to 38.According to Amazon, “Movers & Shakers” identifies the biggest gainers in sales rank compared to twenty-four hours ago.

Discount retailer’s web site crashed several times as fashionista's collection went on sale Target was hoping for a smooth launch for one of its most highly anticipated designer collaborations in years. Instead, the discount retailer’s web site was overwhelmed in the early hours on Sunday as legions of fashionistas who had been up overnight tried to snap up Lilly Pulitzer’s fashions, only to encounter delays in the colorful beachwear line’s availability on Target.com and in many case, end up empty-handed. The incident has raised questions as to why the retailer wasn’t fully ready for the onslaught.

Gov. Tom Wolf is expected to call today for the Republican-controlled General Assembly to send him a budget that boosts state education funding and provides relief for school district property taxes while raising the rates of the sales and personal income taxes. His plan for doing so includes a proposal to raise the personal income tax rate in July 2015 from 3.07 percent to 3.7 percent, while increasing the eligibility for a poverty exemption, according to a briefing document prepared by the administration. He will propose increasing the state sales tax in July 2016 from 6 to 6.6 percent while...

A new smartphone market report reveals Apple is dominating as iPhones represented nearly half of the new device activations in the fourth quarter of 2014. "Apple had virtually double the sales of Samsung, and five times that of LG. No other brand accounted for as much as 5 percent of U.S. sales," says Lowitz. "The Amazon Fire and Blackberry smartphones registered slight share, which we attribute to random sample fluctuation as much as actual sales." The report found iPhone activations nearly doubled from the previously quarter. Apple smartphones accounted for about 28 percent of new activations in third quarter of...

From former clinic worker and clinic director Carol Everett: “It was always difficult to find and train telemarketers who could call themselves “counselors” while selling abortions. “We’re helping women,” I had to remind them constantly. Those who didn’t buy my pitch quickly left. I started to believe my own rhetoric. I had to be convincing in order to persuade my telephone counselors, but each time I met with Chuck, I was quickly snapped back to reality. We were in the business of making money, a lot of it.” Carol Everett with Jack Shaw, Blood Money (Oregon: Multnomah Press Books, Questar...

Lena Dunham has canceled two book tour dates in Europe amid accusations that she molested her sister when they were children. The actress tweeted on Monday that she was no longer going to attend events in Belgium and Germany. "To my Belgian readers, so very sorry to miss the Antwerp Book Fair today but I can't wait to come back and eat fries with you. Much love," she wrote. "German readers: I am deeply sorry to miss tomorrow's event in Berlin. I am so grateful for your energy and support. Mit viele liebe." The "Girls" star, 28, has been criticized...

Microsoft has made its entire global advertising sales team redundant, sources have told Business Insider. The layoffs — within the Microsoft Advertising division — are expected to affect around 100 staff across the US, UK and other global offices, charged with selling advertising space across Microsoft's MSN, Bing, Xbox, Outlook, Skype and Windows 8 properties. Sources have told Business Insider it was announced Wednesday. Microsoft was making its Microsoft Advertising global sales team redundant as part of the largest ever sweep of job cuts in Microsoft's history announced this summer, which is understood to affect up to 18,000 roles across...

The gun prohibitionists are always in a tizzy about "the Internet sale of guns". Everytown Moms for Illegal Mayors is making a big deal about "Internet sales" in the campaign for the Washington State universal background check initiative I-594. That initiative, if passed, would mandate universal background checks for all sales and transfers of firearms. Of course, they are being helped by their allies in the Seattle media with articles like this giving the impression that Facebook is just one big gun exchange. Here is what the Brady Campaign sent out to their true believers in their Toolkit 2014 which...

U.S. album sales hit 3.97-million last week, the smallest weekly total for album sales since Nielsen SoundScan first began tracking data in 1991, Billboard's Ed Christman and Glenn Peoples report. It's also the first time during that period that weekly sales have fallen below 4 million, they write.Sales for the week ending August 25 fell 18.6%. The best seller was rapper Whiz Khalifa's "Blacc Hollywood" which debuted with 90,000 units, Billboard says. For the first time in more than a year,  sales for the soundtrack to Disney's "Frozen" fell below 100,000 units.CD sales have practically vanished, down 19.2% year-over-year, with sales at...

As recently as a couple of quarters ago, analysts were convinced that tablet growth rates would be stratospheric forever, or at least until a few billion people had one.Apple, it was said, was no longer going to be "the iPhone company." It was going to be "the iPad company." And analysts were frantically calculating how much money Apple was going to coin once it was selling more iPads than iPhones.Well, those forecasts aren't looking so promising anymore.Tablet growth has slowed sharply over the past few quarters. And tablet growth at Apple has hit a wall. BII Business Insider Analysts have...

  SEE: Purging Out Pollock: The Constitutionality of Federal Wealth or Sales Tax By Calvin H. Johnson I have studied the above cited article and was astounded that one article could have so many misrepresentations and inaccurate conclusions which were apparently concocted in the author’s mind to promote a tax scheme contrary to the true intentions and beliefs under which our Constitution’s original tax plan was agreed to. Calvin writes:The apportionment clauses of the Constitution say that federal "direct taxes" must be apportioned among the states according to their population … Apportionment according to population is a hobbling requirement, somewhere between...

In a further demonstration of the socially destructive and ever widening gap between the haves and have nots, we see that the affluent are buying second homes at an ever increasing clip (up 30% last year), while first home buyers recede into the abyss as private equity and Chinese buyers make purchasing a home unaffordable for the average American. Specifically, a recent study from Zillow showed that more than half the homes in seven major American cities are unaffordable based on historical standards. Those cities are: Miami, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Denver, San Jose and Portland, Ore. Nationwide,...

Chick-fil-A has surpassed KFC as the top chicken fast food chain.  Chick-fil-A's sales in 2013 passed $5 billion, compared with KFC's $4.2 billion, reports Venessa Wong at Bloomberg Businessweek. Chick-fil-A has 1,775 U.S. stores, while KFC has 4,491. Despite a smaller footprint, Chick-fil-A's average sales are more than triple those of its larger competitor, Wong writes. And Chick-fil-A achieves these results despite being closed on Sundays for religious reasons. Wong illustrates a couple of reasons for Chick-fil-A's success. 

A number of Amazon.com sellers are furious over an abrupt change that limits the number of “novelty” items they’re allowed to sell. Reuters Entrepreneurs who have built their livelihoods around the massive retail ecosphere that is Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) are once again being reminded who is running the show. According to a number of third-party Amazon merchants, a recent change that limits the amount of items they’re allowed to sell on the Amazon Marketplace is going to devastate their bottom lines. Last month, the Seattle-based retail giant began informing some merchants that SKU caps are being imposed on “novelty” items,...