Facebook said it is cracking down on online gun sales, on Friday announcing a new policy barring private individuals from advertising or selling firearms on the world’s largest social network. The new policy also applies to Facebook’s photo-sharing service Instagram.
Gun-control groups have long complained that Facebook and other Web sites are frequently used by unlicensed sellers and buyers of firearms.
Facebook “was unfortunately and unwittingly serving as an online platform for dangerous people to get guns,” said Shannon Watts of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a group that launched a public campaign to convince the social network to change its policies two years ago.
Watts said her group has found numerous cases of felons and minors who were able to buy guns on the site, including two cases in which the buyers used the guns to slay others.
Facebook had announced some restrictions on gun sales and advertising in 2014, saying it would block minors from seeing posts that advertised guns.
However, the social network did not ban private sales at that time. Licensed firearms retailers can still promote their businesses on Facebook, but they are not allowed to accept orders or make sales on the site.
The new policy arose from the company’s review of its rules following its recent efforts to encourage new forms of commerce on the site, a Facebook spokeswoman said.
Facebook expanded its digital payments service in summer last year, allowing users of its messenger service to send electronic payments to other individual users.
The latest policy on Friday drew praise from Everytown for Gun Safety, a group formed by the merger of Watts’s organization with another group started by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, and from a leader of the Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
“It is simply too easy for virtually anyone to buy any gun they want online without a Brady background check,” Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence president Dan Gross said. “Facebook just took an important step in addressing that challenge and we call on others to follow suit.”
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