Instagram is Being Used to (Mostly Legally) Sell Guns

Guns on Instagram

Guns on InstagramAmong all the sneakers, dresses, paintings, and dogs being filtered and sold through ad-hoc negotiations on Instagram, there is one outlier: guns. A simple search on the increasingly popular photography app, which Facebook bought in April 2012 for $1 billion, reveals a web of semi-anonymous private and professional dealers who are advertising, negotiating, and selling firearms over Instagram. Users of Instagram, which has no explicit policy prohibiting the sale of firearms, can easily find a chrome-plated antique Colt, a custom MK12-inspired AR-15 tricked-out with “all best of the best parts possible,” and an HK416D .22LR rifle by simply combining terms like #rifle or #ar15 with #forsale. These are handguns, shotguns, assault rifles, and everything in between being sold in an open, pseudo-anonymous online marketplace.

Read the full story at The Daily Beast.

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