
The advertisement that cost Pennsylvania-based Sportsmanâs Shop its Facebook marketing privileges. (Photo: The Sportsmanâs Shop/Facebook)
A family-owned sporting goods store in central Pennsylvania told Fox News over the weekend Facebook pulled its advertisements over guns.
Jessica Keffer, marketing manager for the Sportsmanâs Shop in East Earl, Pennsylvania, said the social media site applies its policy of prohibiting ads promoting weapons sales inconsistently â at the expense of small businesses.
âThere seems to be a very strong political and cultural bias on the part of Facebook toward our industry,â she said during an interview with Fox and Friends Sunday. âWe are not treated the same as your box stores. Dickâs Sporting Goods, Calebaâs, Bass Pro Shops â they all have the ability to advertise. We asked about that and their answer was âwell they sell other things.â We do too.â
The Sportsmanâs Shop â the oldest gun store in Lancaster County â opened three miles down the road from its current location in 1954. The Class III dealer offers a selection of more than 2,000 firearms, suppressors and accessories â as well as outdoor gear and equipment for fishing, archery and hunting. Itâs new location in East Earl also features an indoor gun range.
Keffer said she used Facebookâs marketing features without issue until one day last month when she noticed an ad for the storeâs âHonor the Flagâ sale had disappeared. When she questioned Facebook over the matter, staff referred her to the websiteâs policy against promotions for weapons sales.
Although the flagged advertisement didnât promote gun sales itself, the Sportmanâs Shop, in general, does. Therefore, Keffer explained, Facebook felt justified in revoking its advertising privileges.
âSocial media has a marketplace that you really canât touch any other way and in order for us to reach that marketplace, we need to be able to advertise,â she said. âNot being able to really just does our business and our industry a huge disservice.â
Sportsmanâs Shop isnât the only locally-owned gun dealer and range frustrated with Facebookâs policies.
Shoot Smart â a Texas-based gun range that bypassed local cable networksâ firearm bans by using images of puppies in their television ads â said social media advertising policies prove far more unpredictable.
âIn the past, we have spent thousands on Facebook and Google AdWords, but then out of nowhere, our ads started getting denied,â said Jared Sloane, the rangeâs operation director, in an email to Guns.com last month. âWhen we ask Facebook or Google why we no longer can advertise, itâs always the same response.â
The message, Sloane said, cites a âzero tolerance policyâ toward ads explicitly promoting weapons sales, âwhich includes, but isnât limited to promotion through gun ranges.â
âSo, in turn, we deleted the link on our page that went to the store (a small part of our business),â he said. âWe then created new ads and started fresh, but we were still declined.â
Advertising policies for Facebook and Google indeed prohibit ads selling weapons and explosives â though neither company mentions gun ranges.
âThe problem isnât the rules and why they prohibit the advertising, the problem is the inconsistency,â Sloane said. âSometimes our Facebook ads are approved and sometimes they arenât (majority of time), but then we will see an ad that another company is running that is flat out promoting gun or accessories sales. It makes no sense! We just would like a little consistency.â
Keffer said Sunday âitâs time the industry spoke upâ about the issue, saying âI think we deserve the same right and the same treatment as any other small business.â