SHOPIFY JUMPS ON NOISY ANTI-GUN BANDWAGON

Shopify – a big player in the e-commerce industry – is a provider of online stores for roughly 600,000 businesses.  Last week, this Canadian company delivered a knife in the back to the 2nd Amendment when they banned the sale of some very popular semi-automatic firearms and 3D-printed guns.

Shopify tweeted this week that “We’re giving retail merchants the advanced tools they need to power their physical stores at a better price.”  They need to modify that with a “We’re giving those retail merchants with whom we agree politically, the advanced tools…..”

Yes, they bowed to public pressure from very noisy and aggressive leftists, and suddenly amended their “Acceptable Use Policy” to “restrict” the sale of a variety of firearms and gun-related products – specifically those with magazines that can hold more than 10 bullets, bump stock attachments, and non-serialized firearms.

Fortune reports that “The move is a new indication of how Shopify… is grappling with the responsibility that comes with being the internet’s dominant platform for small merchants looking to sell online. By banning weapons that are otherwise legal to buy, the company is pushing into one of the biggest political and cultural fights in the U.S.”

And push into it they have.

Big surprise here – a Shopify spokesperson minimized the change in policy, and was quoted as saying only a “small” number of stores would be impacted.  Tell this to the many gun retailers who are either scrambling to find a new platform to sell their products, or having to bow to the politically correct and face compliance by December 31, 2018.   Both options are time consuming and expensive – especially for small retailers.

David French, senior writer for National Review issued a stern and somewhat prophetic warning that a “threat looms, one that can stretch across the entire American landscape, is immune to the filibuster, and is largely sheltered from judicial review. It’s a threat that can choke off financing for the gun industry, stifle speech about guns, and lock the gun-rights community into offline (and small online) ghettos that restrict their ability to communicate.”

He continues “Titans of American banking and communication are taking steps to restrict the use of their funds or platforms by gun makers, gun-rights advocates, and others. The threat is just now emerging, but it may be as great a danger to gun rights as it is to the culture of free speech in this nation, and indeed the two are linked.” (click here for full article.)

Obviously, this is a big problem going forward.  Shopify is jumping on the noisy bandwagon of corporate gun control giants like Citigroup, Bank of America and Amazon Web Services.  This, in concert with the stifling of pro-gun speech on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, we could have a real mess on our hands.

French strongly recommends – and GOC agrees – that gun-rights proponents must consider an investment in other business and social platforms.  Don’t take the chance of being shut down with zero notice because some corporate big wig gets their uninformed panties in a bunch.  GOC is glad to see that companies like Gun Rodeo are fighting back with their #DumpShopify movement.  Check it out their statement HERE to read about what they are doing about it.

Corporate America has jumped into the political ring and we must engage, with our voices, with our money and with our feet.