Facebook Says It Will Ban Users from Selling Guns

Facebook is trying to make it more hard for private sales of guns to take place on its site and Instagram.

This is a major departure from Facebook’s March 5, 2014 response to Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Moms Demand Action, and others, when the social media giant would only commit to barring advertisements that appeared to be skirting the law.

Facebook won’t be scanning through your private messages to uncover gun sales.

However, licensed retailers are still able to advertise firearms on Facebook that lead to transactions outside of Facebook’s service.

In a statement obtained by the Times, Facebook head of product policy Monika Bickert said, “Over the last two years, more and more people have been using Facebook to discover products and to buy and sell things to one another”.

Facebook itself has never actually sold a gun, obviously, but as The New York Times points out, it was “increasingly evolving into an e-commerce site where it could facilitate the transaction of goods”. Such reports will be investigated by the social network and any posts found to be in violation of the new gun sale policy will be removed. Everytown has collected examples of murders carried out by people who would have failed a background check, but obtained a gun through a person-to-person sale arranged online – including two cases known to involve Facebook.

Although Facebook doesn’t participate in outright gun sales, it has been a forum for negotiations, and it intends to put an end to that. Following Facebook’s Friday announcement, Everytown said, “We’re thankful that Facebook has listened to our call and shut down a key avenue that criminals have used to avoid background checks and buy guns with no questions asked”. The violators will then be banned from the service, or their posting privileges will be monitored. Both Craigslist and Amazon have banned the sale of guns from their platforms, and EBay has a very strict policy when dealing in the sale and transport of weapons and ammunition.