Not Salesforce approved.
Screenshot by ZDNet
If you grew up, as I did, in a society where guns just weren’t a thing, you’ll likely find America’s veneration of weaponry bizarre.
Dangerous, even.
Yet many in this country believe that good people must have guns — really big guns — so that bad people won’t kill them.
It’s bound, then, to be a touch tendentious when a software company informs its customers they can’t use its wares to sell certain sorts of guns.
This, as The Washington Post reported, is precisely what Salesforce has chosen to do. The company recently changed its acceptable-use policy to offer these words:
Customers may not use a Service to transact online sales of any of the following firearms and/or related accessories to private citizens. Firearms: automatic firearms; semi-automatic firearms that have the capacity to accept a detachable magazine and any of the following: thumbhole stock, folding or telescoping stock, grenade launcher or flare launcher, flash or sound suppressor, forward pistol grip, pistol grip (in the case of a rifle) or second pistol grip (in the case of a pistol), barrel shroud; semi-automatic firearms with a fixed magazine that can accept more than 10 rounds; ghost guns; 3D printed guns; firearms without serial numbers; .50 BMG rifles; firearms that use .50 BMG ammunition. Firearm Parts: magazines capable of accepting more than 10 rounds; flash or sound suppressors; multi-burst trigger devices; grenade or rocket launchers; 80 percent or unfinished lower receivers; blueprints for ghost guns; blueprints for 3D printed guns; barrel shrouds; thumbhole stocks; threaded barrels capable of accepting a flash suppressor or sound suppressor.
Now that’s a lot of restrictions. Though, some might note, companies and governments seem to be exempt.
Naturally, this new policy might enrage those who equate owning a gun with their own idea of personal freedom.
It does, indeed, look like another attempt by Salesforce to enter the socio-political sphere. Not so long ago, it battled with several states and their anti-LGBT legislation.
I asked the company to enlighten me as to its thought-process and wondered how it intended to police its new laws.
A spokesperson told me: “After carefully reviewing similar policies in the industry and discussing with internal and external stakeholders, we updated our policy. The change affects new customers and a small number of existing customers when their current contracts expire.”
It’s true that some companies — Dick’s Sporting Goods was perhaps the most prominent — have been reconsidering their gun-sales policies.
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