The Business of Guns

The Internet

Few changes have affected society quite like the Internet, a digital world where people can find a house, a job, a relationship, a hobby, and virtually any product for sale. Just as you can purchase clothes and electronics online with little more than a mouse and a credit card number, so too can you find firearms, accessories, and ammunition. The freedom of the Internet, however, is precarious. In the year 2018 alone, a single website, Armslist.com, featured one million digital advertisements for the sale of firearms that did not require, or even mention, a criminal background check. The Department of Justice tracked 4,000 separate websites offering guns for sale in 2000—a number that has certainly risen since. The Growth of an E-Industry The mass proliferation of the Internet in American society began in the mid- 1990s, about the same time as the passage of most background check laws. The Internet now reaches nearly 90 percent of all Americans, including nearly 30 percent who are

59