The right to keep and bear arms is important, but the First Amendment was what our Founding Fathers deemed as the most important. The Second Amendment is more of an insurance policy. The right to speak freely is the first resort. The right to keep and bear arms is the last resort, for when all else fails.
But the two are linked by more than just that in this day and age. It seems that the modern versions of our public square don't respect either, especially when the speech is about guns.
This, of course, is nothing new. Most who follow gun politics have seen how the right to speak freely about guns has been under a particular type of attack, especially on social media through the years. For one couple, though, it got a little more personal than that.
hil and Gennifer Hesseling knew they’d have to defend their Second Amendment right to bear arms when they got into gun sales and customizations eight years ago.
The owners of Hesseling & Sons Firearms & Gunsmithing on Elida Road in Lima never expected a fight over the First Amendment right to free speech.
They certainly didn’t plan it over a pair of Facebook posts announcing they’d be closed for Easter and the Fourth of July last year.
“Facebook has very clear community standards,” Gennifer Hesseling said. “We at no point ever violated any community standards of Meta Corp. However, we were suppressed, and they accused us of violating their standards. When we would send their standards right back to them and say, ‘Tell us where we violated this,’ they didn’t even answer.”
The offending post for Easter was an Easter Bunny — with no guns in the image, they emphasized — saying the store would be closed for the holiday and sharing the Friday and Saturday hours. That led to a three-day suspension of their Facebook account.
For the Fourth of July, they posted a flag, along with a message they were closed for Independence Day.
“That triggered our page to be completely taken down,” Gennifer Hesseling said. “And that’s when we reached out to Congressman Jordan’s office and said, ‘Please help.’”
While Facebook told them it lifted the ban, its own metrics showed the company wasn’t reaching all of its followers anymore, a tactic nicknamed the “shadow ban.” Their congressman, U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, intervened. Within a day of his office’s assistance, things returned to normal for the retailer, which follows Facebook’s extensive rules for brick-and-mortar firearms dealers with great success.
Jordan suggested that the Trump administration would be inclined to pressure social media companies to change their ways, particularly with regard to Second Amendment-related content. Considering how else things have gone during Trump's second time in the Oval Office, I don't think I have any reason to say Jordan is wrong here.
Part of the problem is that while social media platforms are free to set whatever policies they want regarding speech, there's really not much indication that they actually set the policies they want. Instead, they got pressured by people like the Biden administration to take a particular stance on various issues, including on guns.
Policies put in place tend to remain in place, even if the pressure that created those policies vanishes.
And even with many of these policies that are in place, it shouldn't matter. This is a licensed gun store. Per Facebook's own terms of service, they can offer guns for sale so long as they comply with all applicable laws. There's no reason for a post about the store being closed--a time when they aren't selling guns--to be even looked at as problematic.
The shadow ban is even dumber.
Ideally, I'd like the federal government to stay out of spats between businesses. Unfortunately, this is more than that, and I'm afraid we're not going to see anything close to justice without the government stepping in.
And I hate that I had to write that, too.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member