Matt Valentine teaches writing and photography at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written about gun violence policy for the Atlantic and Salon.

“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.

***

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.”

And then you’ll find products like the Magpul iPhone case, Smith & Wesson brand wristwatches, a Heckler & Koch flashlight, a shovel and a knife made by Glock—even underwear with a built-in holster for concealed carry (not a euphemism).

When Professor Gailey realized that some seemingly innocuous products available through Amazon were a sideline for the gun industry, she shared her discovery with the group Nebraskans Against Gun Violence, with which she volunteers. NAGV published a shareable graphic on Facebook, hoping to raise consumer awareness.

Meanwhile, pro-gun websites were getting to work too. After Gailey published her comment on Amazon, the blog Guns Save Lives linked to her review in an article titled “Anti-Gunner Uses Amazon’s Review System to Blame Magpul for Sandy Hook.” In the comments section under the article, readers argued with each other about whether or not the Sandy Hook shooting had happened at all (“Sandy Hoax” one called it), whether Adam Lanza had used a rifle and whether Magpul had indeed made the magazines for it. The only consensus was that Gailey’s review needed to go away.

Within days of the Guns Save Lives post, Amazon visitors had left more than 300 comments responding to Gailey’s review. A few were supportive. Some were misogynistic. Some used obscure vulgarities—the sort of creative diction a habitual troll might develop over time while learning to evade content filters. Others threatened lawsuits. Some were extremely hostile but technically weren’t death threats:

“Maybe I could bludgeon you to death with a Stanley hammer. blame the company… Eat shit,” wrote Anthony Dulaney.

“This is what you get when you let women have phones,” wrote Aimless223.

Someone named Rusty commented, “We can only hope you die in a grease fire.”

Ignoring Amazon’s “verified buyer” icon, many accused Gailey of writing a fake review for a product she had never actually purchased.

The discussion continued on AR15.com, where users posted Gailey’s campus directory information in a forum thread, along with manipulated versions of her Facebook profile photograph. (In one iteration, she’s smiling under the logo of an Internet pornography website.)

Meanwhile, trolls created fake student evaluations accusing Professor Gailey of making “derogatory comments against African Americans and Puerto Ricans” and being an “excellent professor for leftists and communists”—though these comments were mistakenly posted on a page affiliated with the wrong university.

After Gailey called Amazon customer support, the most heinous responses to her review were deleted. When I contacted Amazon’s press office about this incident, they referred me to their review guidelines, which forbid “obscene or distasteful content” and “profanity or spiteful remarks.” Of course, even if Amazon dutifully polices its own comment threads, it can’t protect customers from harassment and cyberstalking that spreads to other sites.

Of course, Internet activism for gun control isn’t merely an invitation to harassment and calls for violence. In fact, social media has become one of the most effective vehicles for gun-reform advocacy. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has accumulated 110,000 followers on Facebook. Campaign to Unload has more than 50,000. Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, which was founded on Facebook just two years ago, today has nearly 220,000 followers. These groups have frequently mobilized that huge base of support for social media campaigns. Last month, for example, when the National Shooting Sports Foundation announced that comedian Jay Leno would speak at its annual convention (which is also the world’s largest gun show), these groups called on their followers to mass tweet their objections and sign an online petition. Just one day later, Leno canceled his appearance at the conference.

One of Moms Demand Action’s biggest social media campaigns targeted Facebook itself:

“We were seeing these stories pop up where kids were showing up at school with guns they’d gotten on Facebook, or criminals were committing crimes with guns that they could only buy on Facebook because they couldn’t buy them through a licensed dealer,” explains Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts. “To think that the platform that started this organization was contributing to the sale of guns to dangerous people and/or minors was very concerning to us.”

Facebook gun sales are like classified ads—the seller, who is often a private gun owner and not a federally licensed dealer, posts photos of guns, along with descriptions and prices. Interested buyers can comment or ask questions, then make arrangements to meet the buyer locally to complete the transaction. These face-to-face private sales don’t require a background check in most jurisdictions. Senators Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) co-sponsored a bill last year that would have required all such sales to pass through a licensed dealer who would perform a background check, but the bill failed to get the 60 votes necessary to pass the Senate. (It had 54.) As federal law stands today, it’s illegal to knowingly sell a gun to a felon, and illegal for a felon to buy one, but there’s no obligation for a private seller to find out whether a buyer has a criminal record.

In January, when Facebook created “look back” anniversary videos for users (which compiled timeline photos into short, nostalgic montages), Moms Demand Action took the opportunity to spoof the videos, using the same format and same music but featuring real screen shots of several informal (and possibly illegal) online gun sales.

Facebook updated its gun policies in March. And though the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence said the changes don’t go far enough, Watts of Moms Demand Action considers the policy update a victory. Under the new policies, Facebook administrators may now remove posts that seem to be promoting illegal gun sales, and Facebook now prevents users under the age of 18 from viewing pages that host gun sales. Though some illegal sales might still slip through, Watts says the new policies are “a huge win for us.”

But with Facebook tightening its gun policies, won’t gun sales just move to another site that is more accommodating? (Such as Reddit, which in 2011 authorized its corporate logo to be engraved onto a limited-edition line of semiautomatic rifles.) Will Moms Demand Action pursue future campaigns targeting other online corporations?

“I think that’s possible, sure,” Watts says. “That’s certainly not out of the question. There are big online platforms that do nothing but sell guns, and they really don’t take much precaution at all to ensure that there are background checks.”

Not all online platforms for gun sales are the same. The auction site GunBroker.com, for example, emphasizes compliance with state and federal laws—a representative declined to comment for this article but sent me language used in all GunBroker.com press releases, including this statement: “Ownership policies and regulations are followed using licensed firearms dealers as transfer agents.”

Then there’s Armslist.com, an online marketplace where unlicensed sellers can post photos and descriptions of guns they want to sell and make contact with potential buyers. Before you can enter the Armslist site, you have to agree to its terms of use, which include the statement “I will not use Armslist for any illegal purpose” but also “ARMSLIST DOES NOT become involved in transactions between parties and does not certify, investigate or in any way guarantee the legal capacity of any party to transact.”

Armslist was targeted this year by a quiet campaign organized by Mayors Against Illegal Guns. (The Mayors group and the Moms group now both operate under the Michael Bloomberg-funded umbrella organization Everytown for Gun Safety.) In March, Mayors Against Illegal Guns sent letters to dozens of large corporations, asking them to stop advertising on Armslist. The letter recounted the story of Zina Daniel, whose husband murdered her with a handgun he found through the website and purchased without a background check. (He would have likely failed a background check because of a court-issued restraining order against him.)

These corporations might not have realized that they were advertising on Armslist. Major brands often use an advertising network—a middleman that populates websites with advertisements based partly on the visitor’s browsing history. The Mayors’ letter advised Allstate, French’s, Costco, Clorox, the American Automobile Association, Kellogg’s, Jet Blue, Sprint and other companies to “tell your online ad buyer or media agency that Armslist.com should be added to a ‘black list’ for any online ad buys with any ad network, much like pornographic or political websites are.”

The March letter gave the corporations a deadline, and hinted at an ultimatum: “On Wednesday, April 2, we are planning to launch a national grassroots campaign calling on companies to pull their ads from Armslist. We wanted to give you an opportunity to take this important step before we launch the campaign.”

“It was the greatest campaign that never was,” explains Everytown for Gun Safety Digital Director Ravi Garla. And it worked. “We were able to tell these companies what was happening and see the changes we wanted to see.”

Visiting Armlist.com today, the only major national brand advertisements seem to come from sporting goods stores, outfitters and manufacturers of guns or shooting accessories. (Armslist did not respond to my request for comment.)

Internet advertising is a sensitive subject on all sides of the gun debate. In June, Breitbart published an article warning that “beginning in September” Google would “block firearm, ammunition and gun accessory ads.” The story was widely circulated, with tens of thousands of shares on social media. Many of the commenters expressed outrage and called for a Google boycott.

I spoke with a public relations representative at Google, who said the company had recently tweaked its advertising policies but had not substantively changed the section on firearms. A Google search for “guns” today turns up 350 million results—you just won’t see paid gun advertisements at the top of the page. This is nothing new. Google says its policies “are often more restrictive than the law, because we need to be sure we can offer services that are legal and safe for all users.”

As with Internet listings for private gun sales, online gun advertising is virtually unregulated. “It’s all kind of voluntary,” Garla says. “Congress has left it up to these companies to decide whether they want to be good corporate citizens or not.” Some companies react to consumer pressure and carefully evaluate the PR implications before adopting firearms policies, whereas others take action on their own initiative.

Gun control groups think that by framing the issue as a matter of corporate responsibility, they’re setting a precedent that might gain momentum. “I think you can expect to see some companies announce proactively, because of our work, that they’re going to put policies in place,” Watts says. “We’ve had companies approach us since we started these campaigns—they don’t want to be a target of them.”