By David Codrea
USA – -(Ammoland.com)- A cabal of “progressive” social media users hostile not just to the right to keep and bear arms, but to pro-gun advocacy and information sharing, is working to get such groups shut down for terms of service violations.
That’s the entirely foreseeable result of Facebook banning firearm-related advertising and implementing a Chinese-style snitch policy to forbid private online offers that could lead to firearm transfers.
Oath Keepers members saw one instance recently where a snitch hostile to gun rights got Facebook to take down a graphic (see above) that presented a key danger of citizen disarmament, one that illustrated the nexus to genocide enabled by such edicts. That can keep such information from reaching a wider audience that may have never considered the undeniable documented connection.
With establishment media overwhelmingly hostile to the right to keep and bear arms, if gun owners want the truth to get out, one of the tools available has been social media.
If that’s restricted, if truthful and powerful, albeit visceral posts are summarily removed along with threats of further banishment reprisals, the establishment media will once more claim its place as information gatekeeper (which has been a documented goal). Any thought falling outside of the approved dogma will be relegated to limited niche fringes with little chance of further dissemination. That’s what the snitches are trying to do.
This is corroborated by a Facebook group called the Liberal Rifle Association, which has compiled further evidentiary links.
“We’ve got bombshell news for the gun community,” the group claims. “Spread this far and wide. My friend has uncovered an organized group of trolls working 24/7 for months to take down THOUSANDS of Facebook pages, groups, and personal accounts for being even remotely related to firearms. Even going as far as compiling names of all persons in gun groups (doxing).
“Remember months ago when Facebook made private gun sales a violation of TOS, and how mysteriously thousands of groups and pages started being taken down that weren’t even selling firearms?” they elaborate. “Well we’ve uncovered the rat’s nest responsible for this campaign of targeted harassment.”
Read their entire post and assess their claims and links for yourself. In the mean time, AmmoLand Shooting Sports News has received independent information that the group has abused Facebook glitches to work around limitations on the number of reports that can be made in a given day by any one user. Also targeted have been gun discussion pages and airsoft team pages.
Search terms have been used by the snitches, not just for firearm models like “AR-15” or company names like “Ruger,” but military base names in groups have also been targeted because of the potential there’d be something gun-related going on.
One of the “leaders” in the snitch effort is an obsessed character named Mike Monteiro, apparently a San Francisco (naturally!) designer of sorts, but one who also evidently has all sorts of free time to spend on Twitter. Monteiro shares his thoughts on a range of “progressive” topics, with a special, angry fixation on the right to keep and bear arms.
“It’s time to take everyone’s guns,” he tweets, remaining strangely silent on what his envisioned role in the raids will be. “It’s PAST time”
It’s time to take everyone’s guns. It’s PAST time.
— Mike Monteiro (@monteiro) July 8, 2016
So much for the “No one wants to take your guns” meme the antis fall back on to mask the fact that such an end game goal is exactly what they want to do.
To demonstrate that he wants to eradicate more than gun sale offers, Monteiro put out three sequential posts on July 5 urging his followers to report the NRA Facebook page:
To further corroborate matters for themselves, readers can see many of the activities and personalities involved in Facebook takedowns by checking out the Twitter hashtag #ReportGate.
Another 42 FB groups dealing guns reported and removed today for a personal total of 1015. Cc: @monteiro #ReportGate pic.twitter.com/bjn9JHHYOI
— John Sibley (@jbsibley) July 9, 2016
What can those who frequent gun rights advocacy groups do?
First be aware that this is going on. If you find instances where this is happening in circles you frequent, point it out and spread the word. As far as complaining to Facebook, go to “Desktop Help,” click “Report Something,” pick “Other Abuse” and you can get to a dialog box to explain the issue, and to include screenshots and other attachments.
You can also take a degree of comfort knowing the disruption is being caused by a handful of self-important zealots who are getting a ridiculously low ROI for time they’re spending on their obsession. Know that in the scheme of things, they’re completely ineffectual at achieving Monteiro’s dream goal.
He knows that. That’s probably why so many of his tweets come off like childish, foul-mouthed, tantrums.
It’s curious and telling — the gun-grabbers present themselves as “progressive,” yet in true Opposite Day fashion virulently oppose the most egalitarian power-sharing arrangement ever conceived: the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
UPDATE: Well THAT figures…
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament.
In addition to being a field editor/columnist at GUNS Magazine and associate editor for Oath Keepers, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
BINGO! We have a winner! Why is censorship even tolerated? Someone starts doing it in a place like FB and we all react as if they have a right to do so. O_o
Maybe this behavior should be an issue for the courts to intervene in!!!
“The first response should be to reply to the threat against the First Amendment this poses. It is an attack on the freedom of speech to censor or censure another’s exercise of their constitutional rights.”
Don’t use Farcebook but it sure sounds like 1984.
Russian President is more democratic in is thinking than Obama and the rest of the communist liberal idiots in the U.S. He is going to let the Russian citizens arm themselves so they can protect themselves and their property. Never thought I would be able to say that about any leader from Russia. I will not let them take my freedom because living as a slave is not living at all. Micro soft is coming out with new terms of use , which covers hate speech so if you say black lives matter is a racist hate group just as… Read more »
I watched a few minutes of a couple of his YouTube speeches, and they delivered what I expected. An extremely effeminate/hipster type trying to dress and look thirty years younger – nothing is cooler than the middle aged guy trying to dress and act as if he in high school. He came across as a gigantic sissy, so no wonder he has a lot in common with soros – this hipster weakling would be ratting out Jews left and right if he were in the same situation soros was in.
So a deceitful snitch on legal firearm transactions is being subsidized by an actual Nazi collaborator who snitched on his fellow Jews for special privileges! It would seem odd at first until considering both the nazis and this social media snitch share the same views and values on private firearm ownership – and soros has supported both.
Thanks for the update, codrea.
Yahoo is suddenly putting anything pro gun or right leaning in my junk mail folder. Putting them on my contact list and giving them VIP status and they still end up in junk mail. I gave up on Facebook a long time ago.