With Guns Banned on Big Marketplaces, a New Site Steps Up

[Roverron]

Type the word “guns” into Google Shopping (GOOG) and hundreds of so-called airsoft guns pop up. These replica firearms only resemble the real thing: Hobbyists typically use them in mock battles to shoot soft plastic pellets at each other. For people in the market for a real gun, Google Shopping doesn’t work.

That’s because the search giant “doesn’t allow the promotion of weapons or devices designed to cause serious harm or injury” in its paid listings, as its weapons policy explains. Other big online marketplaces, including Amazon (AMZN), Craigslist, and EBay (EBAY) impose similar prohibitions.

Until fairly recently, Google did not, which meant shoppers could compare weapons prices with Google Product Search. This fall, Google finished replacing Product Search with Google Shopping, which limits products to merchants who pay for placement and must adhere to its policies. The ban incensed weapons sellers, who complained that Google was interfering with their Second Amendment rights and who circulated a petition on Change.org, urging the company to restore their wares. “We are adults and do not need you to babysit us,” the petition reads.

Cory Brown, a sporting goods retailer in Rockville, Md., estimates that Google had helped drive 80 percent of his roughly $5 million in annual sales of ammunition, shooting accessories, and gear at one of his sites. (Because Brown owns multiple ventures, he said he was able to offset some of the losses.) Rather than just complain to Google, he launched a new site, FreeGunShow.com, in December. Part free classifieds, part “unrestricted marketplace,” the site doesn’t sell guns but matches buyers and sellers.

“I was like, ‘Look, I’m tired of these companies, whatever [their] motivations, prohibiting the sale of things that are legal,” Brown says. “When Google pulled the plug on this kind of stuff, I knew something bad was happening.”

Gun shows and online matchmaking for gun buyers and sellers has angered gun-control advocates because of a longtime loophole in federal law: Sales by unlicensed “private collectors” are exempt from background checks. FreeGunShow and more established online counterparts such as Armslist and GunBroker.com put the onus for federal and state compliance on the seller. “Technically a private seller-to-buyer transaction could take place and it would be legal under current laws in some states,” Brown wrote in an e-mail. “However, most sellers we talk to regardless [of type] will ship a gun (if the buyer is out of state) to a [federally licensed firearms] dealer.”

Here's the site: http://www.freegunshow.com/

[Jubz]

Thanks for this; checking it out now.