Advertisement
The Left’s war against the Second Amendment and any company or firm that has anything at all to do with the firearms industry is continuing apace, as Amazon becomes the latest retail behemoth to impose authoritarian ‘economic sanctions.’
As reported last week by Breitbart News’ Awr Hawkins, Facebook and Amazon have become the latest platforms to ban or censor gun groups that have posted 3D print files for firearms and gun parts.
The news site reported August 1 that a group of gun rights organizations posted those files to the Internet noting that “code is free speech.” Indeed, code for all kinds of things has been posted online for years as the Internet grew in reach and influence.
But since their posts, the coalition reports that Facebook has blocked the site where downloads for the plans are available, while Amazon removed it from its servers.
Additional reporting by the Washington Free Beacon noted that the coalition publishing the 3D files was comprised of the Firearms Policy Coalition, Calguns Foundation, Firearms Policy Foundation, and the California Association of Federal Firearms Licenses.
Brandon Combs, head of the Firearms Policy Coalition, told the WFB that links to CodeIsFreeSpeech.com were blocked by the two Web-based social media and commerce behemoths.
The WFB reported further that Combs maintains the publication of the 3D gun files online is simply another expression of free speech that is supposed to be guaranteed and protected by the Constitution.
Further weakening of speech – though only for certain political viewpoints that happen to be the polar opposite of far-Left groupthink – is going to have far-reaching, long-term consequences on society in general, Combs warned.
“It was humans involved with Amazon just like in Facebook,” Combs told the WFB. “This is not an algorithm-based issue; they were making human policy decisions. And the issue at Amazon is not done yet. It’s been escalated, and frankly I think many enterprise-clients view this as troubling because [it’s one thing] if you have legal speech that is simply protected and somebody files a complaint, but if it’s just as simple as saying ‘unwanted content’ to take down an instance at AWS [Amazon Web Services], then nobody’s safe.” (Related: Dem lawmaker unveils ‘secret’ gun control agenda his party REALLY wants.)
Amazon Web Services told Combs’ group it must remove a file showing the design of a single-shot pistol designed by 3D-print pioneer Cody Wilson, the .380 Liberator, or the Firearms Policy Coalition site would be taken down.
“We’ve received a notice regarding unwanted content hosted on your AWS resources,” according to an email Amazon sent to him. “A copy of the complaint identifying the content in question is included. Please review the attached notice and take appropriate action.”
But then, Amazon took down the servers hosting the organization’s site – even as Combs said the group was migrating to a different server since the organization was planning for additional action from Amazon.
“We have multiple servers now. Their takedown literally said, ‘unwanted content.’ I guess if unwanted content is enough to get an AWS instance shutdown then I don’t know how Amazon is going to sell that to their customers, but we were already moving,” Combs said.
The nature of this censorship is arbitrary and hypocritical. There is plenty of stuff being sold on Amazon, hosted on Amazon’s servers, that millions would consider “unwanted content,” even as the e-commerce giant allows for the sale of other merchandise that is historically horrific– like Nazi-era symbolism.
As Natural News reported in July 2015:
In a stunning decision of bowing down to political correctness, giant online retailer Amazon has decided to ditch sales of all Confederate-themed merchandise, but will continue to sell paraphernalia pertaining to Nazi Germany and its crazed leader, Adolf Hitler.
Like we said, arbitrary – and hypocritical.
Conservatives are going to have to develop their own social media platforms and e-commerce behemoths if they want a fair shake. The existing ones – run by committed Leftists – simply aren’t interested in our opinions or our business.
Read more about Left-wing censorship of Second Amendment-related material at SecondAmendment.news.
Sources include:
Submit a correction >>
Advertisement
Advertisements