In the first major test of the 2020 campaign season of whether Facebook will be allowing political ads that push a false agenda, Donald Trump’s re-election team has bought ads on the social media giant declaring that “Democrats have finally admitted what they truly want: a repeal of the Second Amendment,” and pushing an “Official Defend The Second Amendment Petition,” a tool that the campaign uses to harvest names and contact information to then market to further.
The ads come just days after the deadly shooting in Odessa, Texas that left seven people dead.
The Washington Post quoted a political science professor who described the ads as “straight from the NRA playbook,” and that’s as accurate a description as you’re likely to find, given that the NRA and the GOP have used the scare tactic of promising their constituents that Democrats want to take away their guns for about 30 years now, though aside from the highly effective and successful assault weapons ban that lasted from 1994 through 2004, there has been no effort from Democrats to do any such thing.
In fact, during the presidency of Barack Obama, federal restrictions on guns were loosened somewhat, and state-by-state restrictions were lifted under the guidance of NRA lobbyist-written bills that made it permissible to carry in more places, with fewer regulations, by people younger than ever.
Nevertheless, during Obama’s tenure, gun sales went through the roof, as the minority of America that actually does own guns bought more and more weapons, falling victim to what essentially amounted to advertising for gun manufacturers by Republicans and the NRA.
The gun-rights organization on Tuesday lashed out at retail giant Wal-Mart over a new policy that disallows customers from openly carrying guns in their stores, though the world’s second-largest retailer has yet to stop actually selling guns in their stores.
And of course all of this comes immediately following one of the deadliest months for mass shootings that America has seen in years, with incidents in El Paso, Texas, Dayton, Ohio, and Gilroy, California racking up more than 50 fatalities at the hands of semi-automatic-wielding terrorists, two of whom were avowed white supremacists and one of whom was a violent misogynist.
If you see the ads on Facebook, please do report them — the platform has vowed to remove political ads deemed to contain false information, and since no Democrat has proposed a repeal of the Second Amendment, these ads violate that policy.
Featured image via screen capture
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