“Facebook is banning private sales of guns on its flagship social network and its Instagram photo-sharing service,” nytimes.com reports, “a move meant to clamp down on unlicensed gun transactions.” Such as . . . ? Never mind. Our friends at gunbroker.com must be over the moon, as Mark Zuckerberg’s minions once again act on the boss’s anti-gun rights agenda. Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America note: “Facebook said it would rely on its vast network of users to report any violations of the new rules, and would remove any post that violated the policy.” Here’s some gloating the antis prepared earlier . . .
New York’s attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, who has pressed for restrictions on illegal gun sales on Facebook and other sites, praised the company’s move.
“Today’s announcement is another positive step toward our shared goal of stopping illegal online gun sales once and for all,” he said in a statement on Friday.
Oh wait! There is an — one — example of an illegal gun sale via Facebook:
Everytown for Gun Safety presented Facebook with research connecting unlicensed gun sales on the site to gun violence. For example, Ms. Watts said, in December 2014, an Ohio man, Brian Harleman, shot and wounded his ex-girlfriend and killed her 10-year-old daughter before killing himself. Although prohibited from buying firearms because of a felony conviction, he was able to buy the weapon in an unlicensed sale on Facebook.
“We were saying, ‘Please stop the unfettered access to guns on Facebook,’ ” Ms. Watts, a mother of five in Colorado, said in an interview.
Anyway, Facebook’s website, Facebook’s rules. The question is: how long before they ban other types of firearms pages or content from the site?