In the Internet of Guns, Facebook's Firearms Ban Is a Drop in the Bucket

That whole information superhighway thing aside, the internet is the world's marketplace. And it's not just e-tailers killing the brick-and-mortars. Every friend or follower is a potential buyer of your junk—and as we learned last week, occasionally that junk is a gun.

Facebook has been taking a lot of heat after VentureBeat reported that people are using it to post ads for firearms, which means finding an unlicensed, unregistered gun is as simple as finding a local vendor and going to pick it up. After backlash from groups like Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action, along with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Facebook today announced that it would take steps to remove gun listings from Facebook and Instagram.

In a release today, Facebook laid out its guidelines for advertising, introducing new educational efforts that will add messages to pages and posts selling regulated goods that remind users to follow the law. Facebook already doesn't allow advertising for weapons, and said that it will "remove reported posts that explicitly indicate a specific attempt to evade or help others evade the law."

While Facebook didn't address the gun sales issue too explicitly, advocates considered it a win. "Responsible social media sites know that it is in no one's interest for their sites to become the 21st-century black market in dangerous and illegal goods that place our families and communities at risk," Schneiderman told the AP.

Meanwhile, one well-known gun classifieds page—named Guns for Sale, naturally—remains online for now. Along with links to ATF regulations for firearms sale, Guns for Sale posted a statement today supporting the changes, along with legal firearms sales:

We are a classified community that has been developed to help gun enthusiasts to LEGALLY buy and sell firearms. We 100% support the idea of keeping guns out of the hands of children and dangerous people (i.e. criminals who aren't allowed to own them). We applaud Facebook for taking a deeper look into this issue that will help make our country a safer place while still keeping our freedoms intact.

In this capacity, Facebook is a marketplace like any other, and its weapons ban mirrors those of eBay and Craiglist, which both use to feature firearms sales before banning them years ago. But it's also important to remember that the internet as a whole is chock-full of guns.

Last December, advocacy groups called out Armslist.com for allowing gun vendors to sell without licenses or background checks. Federal law allows private sales of firearms without background checks—individual states vary—which would generally mean a site like Armslist is doing nothing illegal by creating a forum for private sales.

But advocates allege that some vendors on that site are actually selling in bulk, which would require a federal license. And in any case, private seller laws were written when a regular person had far less sales reach than they do today, which is why some groups have argued that internet gun sales are of more concern than the gun-show loophole: While both allow for gun sales without background checks, the internet never shuts down.

Armslist still advertises a wealth of firearms, as do other sites, regardless of laws. And that's the main concern: Finding a gun on an internet marketplace makes subverting local laws extremely easy. Living in gun-strict New York City, it'd be a huge task to try to find a gun from a private, local seller, especially without local classifieds. But thanks to sites like Armslist, I see there's a nice pistol for sale just a few hours to Albany that I could pick up, cash in hand, without a problem.

That's just the reality of the internet; shutting down Armslist would just leave someone else in its wake. (See: the Silk Road, whose successors have been numerous, albeit short-lived. Such a crackdown would be even more difficult for firearms, which have far more vocal supporters than narcotics.)

So while it's a good idea for Facebook to try and shut down potentially illegal firearms sales, if advocates really want to cull online gun sales, they also need to address private-seller sales laws that don't reflect the internet's massive marketplace effects.