Gun control is losing steam. After doing their best to use the tragedy in Newtown to limit the constitutional rights of American citizens when it comes to owning and using guns, the millions of dollars and countless hours of campaigning led to exactly nothing happening on the national level and very little on the state level. Even those changes that did squeak through are being fought tooth and nail in the judicial system, and gun control advocates are quickly losing ground there as well. The reason is obvious: gun owners are well organized, engaged, and motivated. So naturally the next step for gun control advocates is to pressure Facebook into banning gun related pages — which they’re doing.
From VentureBeat:
Facebook may announce company policy changes for gun-related pages in the coming weeks, VentureBeat has learned.
The social network has been under pressure from the powerful Mayors Against Illegal Guns and the Moms Demand Action civic group to ban gun-themed fan pages on the site.
Sources close to the conversations told VentureBeat, “Talks are progressing. The discussions are ongoing; there have been positive developments.”
The Mayors Against Illegal Guns group and their wholly-owned subsidiary Moms Demand Action are using a handful of examples where prohibited persons have purchased firearms through Facebook as their “think of the children” rallying cry to force Facebook to ban all gun related activity on the website. The groups have been pushing their agenda through a Change.org petition as well as a Twitter annoyment campaign. Ostensibly, they want Facebook to ban gun trading to “end gun violence,” despite the fact that it won’t actually stop any criminals from buying guns and will instead be another closed avenue to the 100% legal trade in civilian firearms in the United States.
That’s the party line — but the concern is that Facebook’s changes would cut much deeper than just banning sales.
From what we know about the way gun control advocates work, their entire strategy is based around suppressing the actual facts and repeating their own propaganda until it becomes “common sense.” It’s the reason why you’ll never see a pro gun control video with the comments enabled or a Moms Demand Action Facebook page with a single positive comment about gun ownership — their arguments simply cannot stand up to any scrutiny and they know it. Their brand of extremism can only survive in a vacuum, and any exposure to actual facts brings their whole world view crashing to the ground.
It only makes sense that Michael Bloomberg and his employees would want to silence the gun rights pages on Facebook. Removing gun owners’ ability to communicate and coordinate effectively would be a massive blow, and allow the gun control advocates to “divide and conquer” the various cliques of gun owners one at a time like they did with the Brady bill and the Assault Weapons Ban.
But of course, while banning pro-gun pages is on their agenda, I bet no one is talking about banning the flip side of the coin and removing the Moms Demand Action Facebook page. Because Michael Bloomberg and the rest of his gun control advocate cronies believe that the laws don’t apply to them, for some reason.
