Posted on 11/04/2013 1:58:56 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) on Monday asked Instagram to stop its users from selling firearms.
“A growing number of Instagram’s users are conducting unregulated gun sales through Instagram’s widespread mobile and Internet application,” Markey wrote in a letter to the company on Monday, citing a Daily Beast report from last month.
Markey said he is concerned that “a significant number of unlawful sales of firearms may be occurring through Instagram’s mobile and online services.” Markey noted the ability of Instagram users to remain anonymous and find gun sales through “an array of ever-expanding search terms” such as #gunsforsale, #gunstore and #guns_of_instagram.
Instagram users can “publicize products widely without registering as a seller or otherwise disclosing his or her identity” and then conclude sales offline, Markey wrote.
As a result, some sales could violate state and federal laws, such as selling “to those under 18 years old, to out of state buyers by sellers in states that have prohibitions on interstate sales or firearms, or by sellers who are declining to conduct background checks” when required, he said.
Instagram should follow online platforms like Craigslist, eBay and Instagram’s parent company Facebook in prohibiting firearm sales, Markey said.
“We should not allow Instagram to be used as Instagun.”
Well, at least every gun is not going to a drug gang member like fast and furious.
This is like saying Match.com facilitates prostitution.
“People are selling firearms? On the internet? Oh my stars!”
Ed Markey (D-Mass) would know what freedom looked like.
Oh how disappointed they will be in a few years when anyone can download blueprints from The Pirate Bay to print out a gun at home.
People are engaging in legal sales of personal property with NO goobermint oversight AT ALL??? What are they thinking?? This must be stopped at once!! [eyeroll]
Did anyone tell this statist tyrant that private sales are perfectly legal under federal law and the laws of most states? Then who the hell does he think he is demanding Instagram in effect take his preferred political position on a controversial policy issue? (And I'm giving the weasel the benefit of the doubt even calling it "controversial")
Instagram needs to send him a legalese FO&D letter, but then the IRS'd probably audit them till the commies come home, so I guess the best they can do is just meekly ignore him.
Well, see, that's exactly the problem. You can't really tell a cartel member from your typical Dumb-as-crap Osama voter, but for all we know, half these Instagram guns are probably going to bitter clingers and (gasp)....CONSERVATIVE WHITE MALES!!!
Every time these bastards try to tell us gun owners we can't do something, we DO MORE AND MORE AND MORE of it.
Like buying AR's and AK's and suppressors and anything else they don't like.
Unregulated - is starting to sound like unexpected. A word that doesn’t mean what they say it means.
A free people regulate themselves.
Big Brother is watching you, and he won’t allow you to pull down the shades.
I assume Markey has no evidence of “significant” illegal sales.
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