The gunfight in cyberspace
I bought it because it looked cool,” explains Amanda Gailey, a professor at the University of Nebraska, about the Magpul Industries iPhone case she purchased from Amazon in June. “It looked pleasantly utilitarian. It never occurred to me that a company that makes a phone case could be involved in the gun industry.”
Gailey is a vocal advocate for tougher gun laws. She avoids shopping at some local retailers that allow customers to openly carry weapons in their stores. So she was mortified when her husband pointed out that her new iPhone case was manufactured by a company that also makes components for high-capacity semiautomatic rifles.
Gailey didn’t want to support the weapons industry, even accidentally. So she packed up the iPhone case and mailed it back to Amazon. She left a strongly worded review, advising potential buyers to be aware that this product is made by the same company that produced some of the ammunition magazines used in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, and that, when Colorado legislators were considering magazine capacity restrictions in the wake of the Aurora theater massacre, Magpul threatened to close its Colorado factory and move production (and jobs) elsewhere. Gailey titled her review “Magpul feeds on death.”
Gailey knew that she was weighing in on a controversial issue. “I anticipated some negative comments and down votes,” she says. But she never expected her brief product review to trigger the massive online harassment campaign that followed. “I got concerned when I saw comments about beating my head in with a sledgehammer.”
Welcome to the gunfight in cyberspace. With Congress inert on the issue of gun control, activists have been redirecting their efforts to the private sector, asking corporations to enact “no guns” policies and encouraging consumers to consider those policies when deciding where to shop and what products to buy. So far, the campaigns have mostly targeted brick-and-mortar shops, such as Starbucks, Chipotle, Target and Kroger. But gun control activists have also been asking Internet-based corporations to make tough decisions about their relationships with the gun industry—concerning not only sales, but also advertising and social media practices. And, as Gailey discovered, gun rights advocates have been quick to return fire. As with any online argument, the debate can escalate quickly and get very personal—and businesses can be caught in the crossfire.
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The highest-profile gun policy debate in recent years has been about open carry—the right to display (rather than conceal) a firearm in public. Regulations vary by jurisdiction, but in most states some form of open carry is allowed, often without the training or testing that a concealed carry permit would require. Inspired by the armed public demonstrations of groups like Come and Take It America and Open Carry Texas, supporters throughout the country have proudly shared selfies on social media, posing with their weapons while in line for a latte or strolling through the pharmacy aisle of a supermarket with a semiautomatic rifle slung over one shoulder.
Nationwide, the opposition to the open carry movement has been organized in large part by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. The Moms are sometimes compared to Mothers Against Drunk Driving—like the leadership of MADD, these activists are mostly parents concerned for the safety of their children, or outraged by the deaths of children they have already buried. But whereas MADD successfully championed landmark legislation like the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act, Moms Demand Action has thus far found more traction influencing corporate policy than federal law.
Current gun reform strategies might more aptly be compared to anti-apartheid activism in the United States in the late 1970s. Groups like Campaign to Unload, States United to Prevent Gun Violence and Generation Progress are following the playbook of South African divestment, asking university endowments and other large investors to dump stocks in the gun industry. Likewise, Moms Demand Action is framing the issue as a matter of corporate responsibility—another key strategy of South African divestment.
The Internet, though, is a complicating factor in social advocacy that wasn’t a concern 30 years ago, and it’s been both a blessing and a curse to gun policy reformers. When Moms Demand Action was organizing a boycott of Target stores, it suggested some alternative places to shop, with Amazon at the top of the list—there’s no open carry in cyberspace, and Amazon has policies in place that prohibit the sale of guns and of most gun parts and accessories.
But that doesn’t mean the shooting industry doesn’t do business through the nation’s largest online retailer. Under federal law, it’s illegal to modify a semiautomatic gun to make it fully automatic, but in the “Sports and Outdoors” section at Amazon, you can buy aftermarket parts to modify a semiautomatic rifle to “bump fire” (achieving a rate of fire similar to a fully automatic machine gun, without technically breaking federal laws). You’ll also find laser sights, internal gun components and scopes. Some listings appear to violate Amazon’s existing policies, such as those prohibiting the sale of “multi-rail systems” and “pistol grips designed for attachment to an assault weapon.”
