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Man Starts 'Gunbook' Social Media Site After His Gun-Loving Friends Were Kicked Off Facebook (buzzfeed.com) 532

CaptainDork shares a report from BuzzFeed: A British gun enthusiast whose friends were banned from Facebook for posting pictures of firearms has started his own version of the site for gun lovers. Called Gunbook, it was set up by David Scott, a 57-year-old shooting instructor who lives in Kilsyth, 20 miles from Dunblane. It went live three weeks ago and he says it already has more than 1,000 members, around 60 of whom are from the U.S. Scott admitted that part of the attraction of the site for members was that they could post about their love of deadly weapons without being judged by family and friends. "Quite a lot want to talk about guns and shooting and target shooting and their families can see and often people comment. Gunbook is the place where people can talk about guns without their families seeing because a lot of people have got anti-shooting and anti-hunting friends on these sites."

Many of the profile pictures on the site show people standing in striking poses with guns -- or are simply a picture of their arsenal. And just like any other social media platform, much of the content that has quickly populated the Facebook clone ends up being videos and memes. In contrast, his site is loosely controlled and encourages a community around gun ownership. It has two admins but reassures users in a Q&A on the site that "they will generally just leave you all to get on with things." It adds later that "they will never interfere [in a group] unless a post gets reported and even then only racist and really dodgy ones will get looked at if reported. Please do NOT upload porn videos to our servers though ;0."

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Man Starts 'Gunbook' Social Media Site After His Gun-Loving Friends Were Kicked Off Facebook

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  • by cordovaCon83 ( 4977465 ) on Friday March 23, 2018 @08:08AM (#56312121)
    1) Post a geo-cached photo of where you keep your guns. 2) There is no step 2.
    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      You think sites like these don't know how to strip EXIF data?

      Even funnier: You don't think people who upload pictures can hack the geolocation data and insert the lat/long of some anti-gun whiners?

  • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Friday March 23, 2018 @08:10AM (#56312137) Journal
    It is just a matter of time before we liberals win the election. At that time when we want to come grab your guns, it is nearly impossible. Because Republicans have placed so many restrictions in government keeping track of gun obsessed fanatics that do not simply obey our commandments.

    Now! with this Gunbook all those people who must be put down ruthlessly to make sure our Liberalism, Globalism and the Third World Order go unchallenged will be self identified! Our task has been made so much simpler.

    Thank you Gunbook. Wait!

    It is from the UK, the bastion of obedience and cradle to grave welfare state where we vote ourselves benefits paid for by taxing the idle rich. Is it possible this Gunbook was actually created by my comrade in arms? Is it a Flase Flag operation? Have I blabbered too much and gave the game away? OMG! What have I done!

  • by cyber-vandal ( 148830 ) on Friday March 23, 2018 @08:12AM (#56312153) Homepage

    As they find out that guns aren't in fact banned in the UK.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      As they find out that guns aren't in fact banned in the UK.

      But still much more restricted than in the USA. Many of us are quite aware of it, the issue is that we don't want things to get as restricted as they have it.

      That aside I have no shortage of co-workers and friends who are immigrants who are interested in going to the range as my guest when they find out that I target shoot for sport, I'm always happy to give them a lesson for the cost of the ammo and range fee.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Requiring burdensome licensing and handling requirements, being restricted to a small pool of low caliber/low capacity long guns, virtually no handguns, and having no right of self defense with a firearm. Yes, I'm sure gun advocates heads are exploding about just how great gun rights are in the UK. /s

      • There's always some dumbass on stories like this wittering on about the gun "ban" in the UK leading to a rise in violent crime. Whatever will they do now?

    • by mjwx ( 966435 ) on Friday March 23, 2018 @08:32AM (#56312279)

      As they find out that guns aren't in fact banned in the UK.

      Just imagine what will happen when they find out guns aren't necessary for self defence here in the UK because we haven't armed criminals to the teeth.

      The biggest criminal risk at the moment are people on mopeds stealing phoned out of the hands of those not paying attention.

      Guns are owned in the UK for mostly recreational purposes, which is fine with the overwhelming majority of Britons. You need a license, safe place to store it and a place to use it... and Volia... you can have a gun.

      • by Kernel Kurtz ( 182424 ) on Friday March 23, 2018 @09:45AM (#56312839)

        Just imagine what will happen when they find out guns aren't necessary for self defence here in the UK because we haven't armed criminals to the teeth.

        Pretty much how I feel in here Canada. I own guns, and accept we have strict controls on them. I don't live for my guns so I don't obsess over it.

        If I lived somewhere that I felt I needed to carry a gun to be safe, I would move.

        But to each their own.

        • Amusingly, the gun laws in Canada are generally much more permissive than UK laws. If anything, just going by the types of guns that civilians can own, for example, I'd say that Canada is much closer to US than it is to UK.

          Yet, when you look at the crime rates etc, Canada is more like UK.

          It's almost as if it's not the gun laws that make the difference between these two, and US.

    • Nope we know that it is possible to own firearms, But under very strict restrictions. Restrictions we won't even begin to accept.
  • YouTube has been shuttering or demonetizing channels that feature firearm content. Seems like your channel can get suspended on one single complaint from a rabid anti-gunner, even if you haven't violated any rules. And then you have to fight to get it back up again.

    And reddit just recently included firearms along with drugs, stolen goods, sexual services in a list of things that can't be bought, sold or traded. One of those things is perfectly legal.

    Many firearms video channels have moved to Full30.com,

    • Citi just announced a bunch of gun related restrictions on credit card processing.

      I think it's just a matter of time until the NRA and NSSF start a bank to step into that void.

      The last civil was was over slavery and money, the next one will be over guns.

      LK

    • by Luthair ( 847766 ) on Friday March 23, 2018 @08:33AM (#56312293)
      Youtube is demonitizing them because advertisers don't want to be associated with it.
      • by PPH ( 736903 )

        Meanwhile, one of our local TV network stations is selling half hour 'paid programming' slots to a US gun manufacturer. There are plenty of 2A friendly advertising dollars out there. Target shooting, hunting and collecting guns are wealthy peoples hobbies. Pandering to neurotic hippies' fears just doesn't pay as well.

      • by brennz ( 715237 )
        there are lots of advertisers that do want to be associated with it. Half the youtube gun videos are associated with a bigname gun, ammo, or supply related company, and many of them are outright branding. However, if Youtube is going to discriminate against them, I am happy to watch gun videos elsewhere, and take my paying "user" eyes to enrich one of their competitors.
    • by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Friday March 23, 2018 @08:40AM (#56312353)

      The risk here that people who support gun-rights should fear most is exactly what is happening with their extreme stance on guns: public support will evaporate, and they WILL be taken away. Once taken away, it's gone forever, we all know that. I have no problems with gun or gun ownership for mentally stable adults with no criminal record, who have been trained on how to handle and care for guns, and who are willing to take responsibility for them and own the consequences. I share their distrust of government, and particularly the people who buy our government and set its laws and policies. We absolutely should be armed. But not all of us.

      The complete abdication of responsibility in favor of total devotion to the second amendment is going to result in them being removed, one way or another. It doesn't seem like it right now, the NRA is still strong and the currently installed government is favorable, but what may not be seen clearly is how tenuous that position is, that much of this government was installed with the bare minimum of popular support, and that on this particular issue, one of many, may not actually be that popular even amongst their own.

      The NRA is failing everyone right now, and Facebook is one of a multitude of examples of that. The NRA should be acting as a steward, being the voice of reason that champions gun rights by making sure they're well and properly used. That the people most likely to misuse and abuse their rights are restricted from gun ownership. They ought to be researching and offering solutions to help ensure that gun owners are going to be the best and safest examples of what an armed populace could be. Taking a hard-line, extreme, no tolerance stance on gun control is ultimately going to be self-defeating. And we are watching it happen in slow motion.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by SirSlud ( 67381 )

        I share their distrust of government, and particularly the people who buy our government and set its laws and policies.

        I've yet to see anyone make a decent case of how guns would be a useful and/or effective means of remedying that. If poop hits the wall, it's not the guns that tear the state down, it's the millions of people storming the gates, guns or no guns. A far more plausible scenario for the states, *if* a large enough group of armed citizens took over the government would be an equally shitty junta

      • I live in rural mid-west, guns are very common. They are mostly used to for hunting and to keep predators away from farm animals. Locked gun cabinets and safes are also very common. With the exception of a few nut bags most of the people aren't gun toting anti-government conspiracy theorists. Gun suicides, fatal drug overdoses, and the flu each more than double the number of homicides including gun homicides in my state.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        They claimed Obama was a tyrant.

        No one stormed the white house or rose up in rebellion using their second amendment right provided guns

        It just proves most gun owners are in severe need of viagara and they are using guns as a poor substitute. All that talk of being the last stop against tyranny is just self delusion.

        But they do show up in elections, and vote, and enable unlimited and unfettered access to guns for every deranged mass murdering psychopath. That is the situation.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • "The NRA should be acting as a steward, being the voice of reason that champions gun rights by making sure they're well and properly used."

        They are. You should see what the NRA actually stands for instead of parroting the looney left talking points.

      • The NRA is failing everyone right now

        Why, because they call for exactly what you're talking about? They are the first ones to scream for actual enforcement of actual laws. The vast majority of murders involving guns are at the hands of criminals already blocked from owning and possessing firearms, most of whom have already been busted doing so in the past. And yet they walk around free to keep doing the same.

        They ought to be researching and offering solutions to help ensure that gun owners are going to be the best and safest examples of what an armed populace could be.

        Which is exactly what they do. But they have ALSO had to mobilize to fight back against the Democrats' increasingly overt message that

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Guns are beautiful tools. Crafted with precision and with mechanisms that make clockworks look like toys. Have you seen a P90 fire? Whoever invented this thing is either a genius or a nutjob.

      But you don't have to go for modern guns to find beautifully crafted designs, just look at wheellock guns (actually the first guns to be outlawed, at the court of Maximilian I of Austria, because they could be used for assassination since it was the first kind of gun that could be stored in garment, ready to shoot). Bea

      • Guns are beautiful tools. Crafted with precision and with mechanisms that make clockworks look like toys. Have you seen a P90 fire? Whoever invented this thing is either a genius or a nutjob.

        That's nothing. Shoe lasting machines are beautiful tools that make guns look like toys. I don't think there's a big collector market for them, though.

        Trivia of the day: Long thought to be impossible, the first shoe lasting machine was invented in the late 19th century. It was so intricate and complex that the

  • Gun nuts (Score:2, Insightful)

    Gun nuts are funny people. They think their peashooters are going to protect them from a "rogue Federal government". Tell me guys, when are you going to start doing that? I would love to hear the plan for your well regulated militia you are going to form (soon).
    • Re:Gun nuts (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Major Blud ( 789630 ) on Friday March 23, 2018 @08:31AM (#56312263) Homepage

      They think their peashooters are going to protect them from a "rogue Federal government".

      Funny these guys didn't get that memo.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re:Gun nuts (Score:5, Interesting)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday March 23, 2018 @08:39AM (#56312345) Homepage Journal

      Gun nuts are funny people.

      Anti-gun nuts are children, lost in a world of confusing realities and apparent contradictions.

      They think their peashooters are going to protect them from a "rogue Federal government".

      Yeah, what a dumb idea! That's never had the slightest effect on US policy, except in Afghanistan, Iraq, Viet Nam...

      Tell me guys, when are you going to start doing that? I would love to hear the plan for your well regulated militia you are going to form (soon).

      The authors of the second amendment stated in no uncertain terms that the purpose of the 2a was to avoid the need for a standing militia because they knew such an instrument was harmful to freedom both foreign and domestic. George Washington, who the natives knew as "Town Killer" for his massacres, decided we needed a standing military and the rest is the history of American imperialism. If you look in a dictionary of the day, you will not find "rules and regulations" as a meaning for regulated, which came later. What it meant was "working correctly" or "working on time" — a regulator is a device for making an machine run at a given speed, and this is the contemporary sense.

      Gun violence is actually falling as more guns are sold, and percentage of gun ownership remains roughly constant. But you're being sold a lie about it in order to support taking guns away from as many people as possible. That few guns are grabbed is due only to effective resistance. The ACLU doesn't give one shit about self-defense, which is the only reason the NRA even exists. If I had a dollar for every gun owner who's said "the NRA is crap but I need range insurance if I want to shoot" or "I don't agree with everything they say but nobody else is looking out for my rights" I could start my own goddamned NRA, with blackjack and hookers. By refusing to support the second amendment, the ACLU effectively created the NRA. Yes, the NRA predates the ACLU, but it wasn't always this kind of political powerhouse.

      • Interesting post. Informative. Wish I had mod points at the moment. I'd do my part to get that "Troll" label off of it.
      • I don't frequently see eye to eye with Mr. Drinkypoo, but whoever marked this post as a troll is afraid of reality. Stop it. He's making an accurate, correct observation. Don't like? Then you don't like actual history, and are trying to wish it away.
    • History (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gDLL ( 1413289 ) on Friday March 23, 2018 @08:43AM (#56312383)
      In my country the last free men that fought the communists/NKVD were the armed ones. And they lasted for years in the forrests. Some of us look up to them and would do the same, and some of us are little spineless dogfemales that have no problem living in chains and should tilt their eyes down when the adults are talking.
    • or Otaku. I know several gun nuts and it's a social circle for them that accepts them without preconditions. Shared passions are like that. Religion, MMOs, D&D, etc all fall into the same boat. A lot of times they've got various personality defects or are just plain bad at socializing. This isn't a knock on them, that's just what it means to be a nerd. But it means they're intensely defensive of their right to own and shoot guns. Try and take them away and you're cutting them off from their social circl
      • by brennz ( 715237 ) on Friday March 23, 2018 @09:18AM (#56312637)
        my favorite technique when someone takes a contrary position is to come out with a group of ad hominem attacks, and claim they have personality defects. /Sarcasm. It isn't like we in the US have a sizeable number of active duty & veterans across all the 7 uniformed services, and gun bearing professionals in Law enforcement & security, and just regular citizens with interests. We don't number in the millions, we are just a figment of your imagination....
        • but they're not the ones that drive polls. Universal background checks have a 97% approval rating in this country yet we don't have them. That's because those sensible law enforcement officers don't show up to the polls to vote for background checks. They've got a dozen other issues (education, healthcare, their pensions, etc, etc).

          The way our elections work getting 1-3% extra votes makes or breaks most elections. That gives single issue voters a disproportionate amount of power. That means a small grou
    • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      Gun nuts are funny people. They think their peashooters are going to protect them from a "rogue Federal government".

      I just like guns, especially older military issue firearms and antiques, because I am actually a history nut and each of those old guns tells a story. For example, my family has a Lorenz rifled musket which was one of the most used long guns in the Civil War, so it is very likely that gun was carried during the war. Same for my Mosin-Nagant which is stamped 1942 and is matching serial numbers except for 1 minor part. So it was manufactured during World War 2 and quite possibly issued during the war as we

    • They think their peashooters are going to protect them from a "rogue Federal government".

      It sure seems to work in Afghanistan and Iraq . . . their "peashooters" are protecting them very well from a "rogue American government."

      This also defeated the US military in Vietnam . . . but the US generals forgot about that. They also bragged that M1 Abrams tanks, helicopter gunships and Predator drone strikes would easily defeat the insurgents in a few weeks.

      Um, how many years now has the US military been in Afghanistan and Iraq . . . ? Oh, yeah, Obama promised that the US would be out of the wars t

    • by nwaack ( 3482871 )
      You're a true idiot. A government...any government...would much rather face an unarmed populace than an armed one. I may be no match for a government drone but I can guarantee you that no army, no matter how powerful, wants to go up against 100 million armed citizens. The government would basically have to destroy the entire country to beat 100 million people with guns.
  • they could post about their love of deadly weapons without being judged by family and friends

    No one wants their uncle to constantly pop up in the comment section telling that any handgun whose caliber doesn't start with "4" belongs in their wife's purse.

  • by petes_PoV ( 912422 ) on Friday March 23, 2018 @08:42AM (#56312371)

    Please do NOT upload porn videos to our servers though

    When a group who are armed to the teeth ask you politely, who would possibly argue with them.

  • US freedoms allow other great sites to open.
  • Oh yeah? (Score:4, Funny)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Friday March 23, 2018 @09:12AM (#56312577)

    I'll go build my own Facebook, with blackjack... and hookers!

  • by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Friday March 23, 2018 @09:36AM (#56312767)

    This is *EXACTLY* how the internet we all want should work.

    Don't like the commercial forum? Quit whining and set up your own with likeminded people.
    This guys actually deserves some credit for not whining around but actually doing something. .... Wow, check it out, I'm a continental Eurohippster actually siding with a working-class gun-enthusiast on this one. ... *mindflash*

    This is what was so cool about the iNet back in 2001 and why we all love slashdot.

  • ... (see what I did there).

    Analyzing the site, it opened with Adsense and other goop hanging off it.

    The developer is taking advantage of an opportunity.

    Pretty smart on his part.

  • I would think gun magazine would be better.
  • by wardrich86 ( 4092007 ) on Friday March 23, 2018 @10:44AM (#56313345)
    That site looks a whole lot like Facebook... is there a framework available that looks and functions that similar to FB? I'm actually interested in checking it out.

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