Several gun sellers found their Facebook pages gone after Vocativ reported that someone had won an AR-15 rifle through a sweepstakes on the social media site. According to Facebook, the promotion violated their rules against selling weapons and ammunition, but Erik Lowry of Pittsburgh Tactical Firearms in Pittsburgh, Penn., told Examiner Saturday that nothing was being sold on the page.
"In response to Vocativ’s investigation of gun sweepstakes on Facebook, the social network has taken down the pages of at least five groups that have been giving away free firearms on the site , " Vocativ said.
PTF, along with AR15news.com, 556 Tactical LLC and Gun Sweeps, found their Facebook pages gone without any warning on Friday.
According to Frederic Wolens, associate manager for policy communications at Facebook, the pages were removed because they violated Facebook's terms regarding advertising.
"Ads may not promote the sale or use of weapons, ammunition, or explosives," Facebook's ad policy guidelines say .
But Lowry said nothing was being sold, and the company does not sell guns or ammunition on the social media site.
As a result of Facebook's actions, Lowry said, the company lost about 40 percent of its business.
Before being shut down, the page had over 27,000 "likes," partly the result of thousands of dollars of advertising, and Lowry believes Facebook should compensate him for the money he spent on those ads. Moreover, Lowry says he now has to spend more money to adjust his advertising.
Making matters worse, Lowry says Facebook has refused to respond to his appeal, a common complaint heard from a large number of Facebook users in the same situation. Wolens said Facebook does not provide an open appeals email address as it would be impossible to respond to the millions of reports they receive without additional information.
"That's why we ask for people to appeal through the checkpoints," he told Examiner in an email. But Lowry said he used the checkpoints to contact Facebook about 50 times, to no avail.
"I don't get it," he said. "No one has contacted us. It's just unbelievable," he added. "What's the point of an appeal?"
Lowry, however, said he is not going to be stopped by Facebook, and has started another page .
"We're not going to stop. Take away our page and we'll make another one," he said.
But he swears he will not give Facebook "another dime" for advertising and recommended others follow his lead.
"I want justice for everyone," he said.
Lowry is especially upset that he received no warning from the social media site, and said that if the site told him the promotion violated their rules, he would have stopped it immediately.
Wolens said that Facebook uses "various levels of warning and deletion, and it completely depends on the situation as to the warnings that a person or admin receives."
Lowry believes that Facebook is "absolutely" opposed to the Second Amendment.
"They're just looking for an excuse to get rid of us," he said.
Wolens, however, said the Second Amendment "is a right exercised by the people over the government and the actions of private companies do not apply."
"Why would our actions have anything to do with the Second Amendment?" he added.
Lowry isn't taking the incident lying down, and said he is considering legal action, but acknowledged that litigation against Facebook might be problematic as the site's terms of service specifically say that pages may be removed " for any reason " whatsoever.
He also took aim at Vocativ, saying that he "could not believe the lack of education" in their reporting.
Lowry said he has received "hundreds of emails" from supporters outraged at Facebook's actions, adding that some 3-6,000 people have emailed Facebook on their behalf.
"Keep contacting Facebook," he said. "Flood them with emails."
Update: Local station WTAE reported on the incident. Video of that report can be seen here .
Update 2: Lowry's second Pittsburgh Tactical Firearms page was also pulled from Facebook.
Update 3: On Tuesday, Pittsburgh Tactical Firearms' original page was restored.
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