The 18-year-old shooter legally purchased the two rifles he used to kill 19 children and two adults in Uvalde, Texas. With the ease of buying a gun back in the public eye, sites like Facebook are complaining about why they don't do a better job of policing gun sales on the platform.
According to reports, there is no penalty for selling a firearm on the platform. The local Facebook marketplace was found to be easy to get around Facebook's ban on sales.
According to a report from The Washington Post, both buyers and sellers can be cited for selling firearms on the platform 10 times before their account is taken down.
There is a separate policy for accounts that call for violence or have ties to dangerous organizations. You can only be cited once before you are kicked off. The rule on gun sales was not an issue until 2020. There are three strikes for each of the postings about violence or child porn.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said in a statement that they remove posts that violate its gun sale policies as soon as they see them, and that most people who break the policy get less than two. If we find any serious violations that have the potential for real-world harm, we contact law enforcement.
Meta has policies on restricting accounts where one strike issues a warning but two or more strikes equals a longer and longer ban on content posting. Stone said that there are instances where Meta's approach is "one-and-done".
The only ramification was that a seller's post was taken down, according to an unnamed source quoted by the Post.
The site allows users to promote gun shows off- platform.
There's no sale or trade of guns on Facebook. There is a list of firearms that include antiques. As long as applicable laws and regulations are followed, firearms can be sold and advertised.
One of the first items up for sale in the area was a rifle with a price tag of $150, though the item didn't say how long it had been on the market.
A Wall Street Journal report from last year showed gun sellers were getting around the issue by listing guns as "cases" or "boxes", using gun makers' logos to imply there was actually a firearm being sold. Facebook told reporters back then that it was always looking for ways to improve.
There was a gun case for sale on the marketplace. The poster sent a picture of a small pistol inside the case.
The strike systems are more severe for depictions of child pornography or for posting hate symbols related to terrorism. The Post reported that those violations have three strikes and you are out policy.
In the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and the 2015 attack in San Bernardino, California, the current regulations were put in place.
According to interviews with unnamed sources from The Washington Post, there was a previous disagreement about how Facebook should handle gun sales. She wanted the platform to ban all gun sales. She was countered by the VP of global public policy who didn't want to offend the political right The Facebook Papers show that Kaplan and others at Facebook went out of their way to court conservatives.
It wasn't until 2016 that Facebook banned its users from selling firearms. The social site will no longer show ads for gun accessories and cases to children.
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