Almost every social media platform prohibits direct sales of firearms and ammunition among users, but actually enforcing those policies can be a challenge. Oftentimes sellers will post ads for gun cases or gun parts, but let potential buyers know that there are guns available for sale as well in private messages.
One Nevada resident, though, says he’s seen firearms explicitly offered for sale on TikTok, and worries that the ads seem to be targeting kids.
David Gomez is a parent to school-age children, and he mentors others. Yet, what he saw on TikTok prompted him to speak with 8 News Now.
“As I was looking at it, I said Wait a minute. This is a one-shot weapon,” Gomez said.
A post by the account Outletwear.us shows a person selling a one-shot weapon. There are other TikTok accounts selling users similar weapons in several colors and directing consumers to a website for purchase.
“When you see yellow and orange on a gun. Obviously, you think. ‘Oh, it’s a toy.’ But, this is not a toy,” Gomez said.
The firearms being sold on TikTok are ghost guns, which don’t have a serial number and are considered untraceable.
“What I was concerned about was that children could have access to this because it doesn’t ask how old you are. It just says, put in your credit card information, and we’ll send you one. Anywhere across the globe. Where is it that this says I have to ship it to a federal firearm dealer?” Gomez said.
It’s important to note that federal statute doesn’t prohibit offering firearms for sale online, though the sales do have to comport with both state and federal law. Selling an unserialized firearm is a no-no under any circumstance, but there are plenty of legitimate sites like Armslist and Guns.com that offer buyers and sellers a platform to engage in the lawful commerce in arms.
I took a look at the TkTok account for Outletwear.us, which is full of videos showing off Trailblazer Firearms’ LifeCard. The .22 caliber pistol is a single-shot firearm that the company advertises as “no bigger than a stack of credit cards.” but the company doesn’t offer unserialized firearms for sale.
If this account is actually offering to sell unserialized knock-offs of the LifeCard, it’s not just violating TikTok policy but federal law as well.
But are those sales really happening? I took a look at about a dozen videos and didn’t see any that explicitly offered guns for sale, and the website associated with the account doesn’t appear to be active.
My guess is that this is a scam, and anybody stupid enough to give their (or their parents’) credit card information to whoever’s running the TikTok account is probably going to receive fraudulent charges in return, not a “ghost gun.”
That’s a problem in and of itself, but I’m not convinced that Gomez has discovered an underground seller of “ghost guns” operating on social media. Those individuals are undoubtably out there, though, and it’s virtually impossible for social media platforms to police every post that uses code words or vague language in an attempt to get around the site’s policies. The best thing for parents to do is to keep an eye on their children and their social media activities… or better yet (in my opinion, anyway) keep them away from sites like TikTok altogether.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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