Secret Web Behind AOL’s Anti-Gun Policy

by Bob Lesmeister
(Published in The New Gun Week, Aug. 20, 2000)
“Hello, this is Jonathan. May I help you?”
“Can I speak to someone about America Online’s policy
of not allowing individuals to buy or sell guns and
ammunition through its web site?”
“That’s our policy.”
“So, you equate guns and ammo with explicit sexual
material and illegal narcotics?”
“Yes.”
“But guns and ammo are legal to sell. There’s no law
against them.”
“The problem is we don’t know who’s selling and who’s
buying. It could be anybody. We wouldn’t know if they were
dealers or not.”
“So, you will allow dealers to sell to other dealers?”
“No, we don’t allow that.”
“Who can I speak to about this matter?”
“There is no one.”
“Well, who came up with this policy?”
“That would probably be our legal department.”
“Let me talk to them.”
“You can’t. They only talk to other lawyers.”
“You mean I can’t talk to them?”
“I can switch you to the operator and you can see what
happens.”
“You mean she can connect me with the legal
department?”
“No, you’ll get a voice mail where you can leave a
message.”
“Who’s in charge of this area of AOL?”
“Keith Jenkins.”
“May I speak to him?”
“No, I answer his calls.”
“Is there any way I can talk to him? Do you have a
number for him?”
“He has a direct line, but you can’t use it.”
“Why?”
“Because you have to talk to me.”
“So, there’s no way I can talk to him at all?”
“No.”
“What about Gateway and Compuserve? As AOL partners, do
they have the same policy of not allowing guns and ammo for
sale on their sites?”
“Yes, they all follow AOL.”
“They can’t independently decide for themselves what
they can and can’t offer on their sites as far as guns and
ammo go?”
“No.”
“Can I speak to Mr. Jenkins?”
“No!”
No, this is not an Abbott & Costello routine. The above
conversation was the result of an attempt to get a
clarification from America Online concerning their policy of
not allowing anyone to buy or sell firearms and ammunition
on their site and the sites they own. If you advertise
firearms or ammunition on a site served by AOL, you will
eventually get a message from the company that states you
are violating AOL’s community standards. Unfortunately, AOL
classifies firearms and ammo in the same category as
pornography, hate speech, illegal drugs, and unlawful
activities.
The same is true for AOL-owned Compuserve and service
partner Gateway.net. None of them, however, make that clear
when you log onto their homepage or sign up to use them as
your Internet Service Provider (ISP). If you look hard
enough and dig through all of the do’s and don’t's, you will
find that only Gateway.net actually lists firearms and
ammunition as prohibited products. AOL and Compuserve send
out nasty e-mails when they find someone buying or selling
firearms through their sites. And if you don’t cease and
desist, they cut you off-permanently.
Curiously enough, there is never a mention of liability
from any of the above-mentioned ISPs. One would think that
would be the driving force behind the ban on firearms and
ammo sales, but evidently that is not the case. To get a
definitive answer from AOL and its subsidiaries is nearly
impossible. No one from AOL will answer any questions on why
they won’t allow the legal advertisements of firearms and
ammunition. This mysterious wall of silence, or obstinance,
is frustrating to firearms owners and firearms industry
people alike. But the mystery clears once you look at
several factors that have shaped AOL’s anti-rights stand.
About a year ago, AOL made a big deal about its
alliance with CBS. An AOL/CBS joint announcement proclaimed,
“CBS News will be guaranteed a major and ongoing presence
throughout AOL . . . America Online has also committed to
showcase the talents of CBS News corespondents, producers
and editors.”
CBS pledged to hype AOL on its news programs such as
“48 Hours” and “60 Minutes.” These programs have been
notorious over the years for demonizing honest gunowners and
the firearms industry. It didn’t take long for that
prejudice to work its way into AOL’s policies.
Now, the big news is the Time-Warner/AOL merger. Let’s
not forget that CNN is part of Time-Warner and Ted Turner is
one of the most fanatical of Clinton supporters. He also
hands over large bucks to the Democratic National Committee
to pursue their anti-rights agenda.
With over 22 million users on AOL, what kind of damage
can the anti-rights corporations like CBS and CNN do? Lots.
Both CBS and CNN are not above fabricating stories, or
breaking the law for that matter. Remember the infamous “48
Hours” segment when the network hired a goober to illegally
convert an AK-47 from semi- to full-auto? Robert W. Pittman,
president and chief operating officer of American Online,
was once the CEO of Century 21, one of the sponsors of that
notorious “48 Hours” program.

‘Free Flow’

The Internet is the only medium left that really allows
the free flow of expression and goods, not only nationally,
but worldwide. With a powerful monopoly such as AOL, that
free flow of ideas becomes so much narrower and eventually
it could collapse into “information” that only AOL thinks
you should have. AOL claims it supports a free market, yet
it has been buying out its competition, while crying to the
government to intervene to keep its competitors from
threatening the company’s profits. It is now threatening to
sue to keep its exclusionary power over its messaging
software.
Microsoft and Yahoo have been attempting to allow its
members to “message” their friends on AOL, but AOL is
blocking this free flow of information. One can’t really
expect a fair deal from AOL on the subject of firearms when
you consider the hypocrisy. As it was cheering the
government’s assault on Microsoft for squashing its
competition, AOL was busy completing its acquisition of
Compuserve, its chief rival in the ISP arena. It then
acquired Netscape, Microsoft’s major competitor in the land
of
browsers.
Firearms and ammunition sales and advertisements, AOL
claims, doesn’t meet their community standards. The company
claims to preserve a safe “net” and the privacy of
subscribers. That’s publicly, of course. Privately, the
company lobbies otherwise. With 22 million subscribers, AOL
collects an enormous amount of information on individuals,
which is one of the reasons it has joined the financial
industry in its attempts to erode consumer privacy.
Last year, Congress passed the Financial Services
Modernization Act. This allows banks, brokerage firms and
insurance companies to share personal records of consumers
without first obtaining their permission. A provision in the
law, however, stipulated that if a state law provided more
stringent privacy protection, it would supercede the federal
law.
Here’s where AOL shows its true colors. Sheila Kuehl,
an assemblywoman in California, introduced legislation to
provide much more privacy protection than the federal law
allowed. AOL and its newly acquired subsidiary, Netscape,
lobbied against it. They don’t want consumers to be able to
give their consent before their private financial
information is bandied about between AOL entities.
In a section they call Online Democracy, AOL has
partnered with the American Association of Retired Persons
(AARP) in a campaign they call BeAVoter.org. This is
supposed to be a nonpartisan campaign to get people to
register to vote, but AARP is well-known to pro-rights
lovers as anti-firearms as any “nonpartisan” organization
can get.
Also, in its Online Democracy compartment, AOL has
something they call Government Guide. According to AOL,
“Government Guide archives and indexes data from thousands
of government web sites into one practical portal,
organizing content by category and making it searchable
based on consumer needs.”
Pretty scary, huh? They gather the information, sort
it, organize it, categorize it and then feed it to you
through “one practical portal.” Instead of searching through
the world wide web as a free bird, you are coerced by AOL
into using their “one portal” to get what they want to give
you.

‘PACT’

Another program AOL pushes in its Online Democracy
section is PACT (Parents And Children Together), To Stop
Violence. AOL encourages adults, teens and children to sign
non-violence pledges and these pledges can be printed out in
certificate form. Since we’ve already determined that AOL
equates the sale of guns and ammo with violence and hate,
PACT becomes a program to further poison the minds of
children and adults against the wholesome sport of
recreational shooting and hunting.
AOL also co-chairs GetNetWise, an industry-wide
resource that features online tools, including software, to
filter explicit and violent content. Here again, since AOL
rates firearms and ammo in the same category as explicit
sexual graphics and violence, GetNetWise is perfect for
filtering out pro-rights issues and products.
AOL’s programs, policies and operating ethics are
probably best explained by learning something of the people
behind the AOL logo. This may enlighten as to why AOL wants
all of its subscribers to use its “one portal” to get their
information and exchange ideas, so long as they adhere to
AOL’s community standards. Those standards may not even
include the beliefs expressed in our Bill of Rights.
According to Time-Warner chief executive Gerald Levin, it
may be time for media corporations to take over the
responsibilities of government!
Levin warns against American cultural imperialism
because there’s no “countervailing force,” and he sees this
as a “significant problem.” Levin has a very eerie vision
for the future of the Internet.
“We’re going to need to have these corporations
redefined as instruments of public service because they have
the resources, they have the reach, they have the skill
base, and maybe there’s a new generation coming up that
wants to achieve meaning in that context and have an impact,
and that may be a more efficient way to deal with society’s
problems than governments,” Levin said on CNN in January.
In a cyber letter sent to AOL subscribers recently,
AOL’s chief executive, Steve Case, claimed, “The next
century will be defined by the integration of the Internet
into people’s lives, into society and into our global
economy.”

Anti-Gun Links

What about the other principal players at AOL? How may
they be directing AOL’s policies concerning firearms and
ammunition?
– Robert Pittman, president & COO, created MTV and
served as a director for MTV Networks. Note that MTV has
always had an anti-firearms bias and is now promoting their
own anti-firearms agenda masquerading as an anti-violence
program.
– Jonathan Sacks, senior vice president and general
manager, AOL Service, founded VirtualCity magazine, a joint
venture with Newsweek (long known for its anti-firearms
slant). He also served as a reporter for the Miami Herald
and associate business editor for the Fort Lauderdale
Sun-Sentinel, both virulent anti-firearms newspapers.
– Marshall Cohen, senior vice president, Brand
Development; prior to joining AOL, he was president of his
own media research and consulting company whose clients
included such anti-gun organizations as Disney, ABC cable
networks, CBS, NBC, ABC and PBS. He also spent 12 years at
MTV Networks.
– George Vradenburg III, senior vice president, Global
& Strategic Policy, previously served as senior vice
president and general counsel of CBS Inc.
– Kathy Bushkin, senior vice president and chief
communications officer, from 1976 through 1984 served as
Sen. Gary Hart’s (D-CO) press secretary. In 1984, she served
on the senator’s presidential campaign. Hart has always
pursued the anti-firearms agenda and some of it may have
rubbed off on Bushkin.
– Mayo S. Stuntz Jr., COO, Interactive Services Group,
previously served as senior vice president, business
management and development of MTV Networks. Also served as d
irector, operational planning for NBC.
– Janice Brandt, president, Marketing, has been
involved in campaigns for People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals (PETA), Greenpeace, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MD), Sen.
John Glenn (D-OH), Rep. Ron Dellums (D-CA) and the
California Democratic Party. We all know of Glenn’s and
Kennedy’s anti-rights stands, but consider the other groups
Brandt has supported.
Greenpeace is a sworn enemy of firearms owners and
hunters, and its members will gladly break the law to press
their agenda.
PETA was born out of the writings of Peter Singer, the
founder of the animal rights movement. Singer advocates
infanticide for babies born with imperfections. He believes
that medically defenseless people should be killed if it
will enhance the lives of their families and society as a
whole. He also peddles the piddle that a person’s life is no
more important than that of a rat or a rattlesnake. He’s
also the guy who helped form The Great Ape Project, which is
attempting to extend personhood and legal rights to the
great apes.
Dellums addressed the opening session of the World
Peace Council’s World Conference on Vietnam, Laos and
Cambodia. The WPC has been classified by the FBI as the
former Soviet Union’s largest and most active propaganda
front organization. He also demanded Nuremburg-type war
crime trials for US soldiers.
In 1980, Dellums addressed a Berkeley symposium
declaring, “We should totally dismantle every intelligence
agency in this country piece by piece, brick by brick, nail
by nail.” In 1982, he voted against legislation that would
make it a felony to publicly expose the identities of US
intelligence officers, agents and sources, the result of
which, would have been the death warrant for all of them. In
1983, Dellums called the liberation of Grenada “nothing less
than a crime against humanity, planned and executed by
people who deserve to be condemned as war criminals.”
During the liberation of Grenada from Marxist dictator
Maurice Bishop, US forces came across a letter sent to
Bishop written by Dellums’ aide Carlottia Scott. In part the
letter stated, “. . . (Dellums) is really hooked on you and
Grenada and doesn’t want anything to happen to building the
Revolution and making it strong. He really admires you as a
person and even more so as a leader. . . That only other
person I know of that he expresses such admiration for is
Fidel.” Dellums is dedicated to the abolishment of privately
owned firearms.
Once you strip away AOL’s corporate double talk and
bright shine, they try to put on their reasons for
controlling the Internet the way they do, and you see a
different story. Revealed are the corporate partners with
lifelong anti-firearms agendas and company officials with
backgrounds seeded in gun control.
So far, there is no evidence that AOL has restricted or
interfered with the exchange of gun-related political
communications. Anyone concerned about AOL can switch to
another ISPs, many of them free.