AR-15 giveaway shut down: The owner of a Pittsburgh-area gun store said that Facebook forced him to shut down his business’s page, claiming that he is now losing thousands of dollars in sales per day.
Fans called store owner Erik Lowry on Friday, telling him that his Pittsburgh Tactical Firearms business was taken down from Facebook. The page had more than 27,000 followers and featured information on stock updates, along with news regarding gun control and the Second Amendment.
TheBlaze website reported that Lowry was running a contest on Facebook to give away AR-15 rifles.
“I still don’t know what’s going on,” Lowry told TheBlaze website on Sunday.
He said that a second page created to replace the old one was also removed.
Lowry said that the store’s page was likely taken down over an article published in Vocativ, which reported that the giveaways caused Facebook to remove five pages that included the contests.
“Our Ad Guidelines prohibit promotion of the sale of weapons and the Ad Guidelines apply to Pages with commercial content on them,” a company spokesman told Vocativ. “Ads may not promote the sale or use of weapons, ammunition, or explosives.”
Facebook reportedly has not contacted Lowry for taking his page down.
