Users of the internet culture behemoth Reddit are not famous for their level-headedness or discretion. So it was a bit discomfiting to spot this AR15 assault rifle—the same kind of gun used by Newtown shooter Adam Lanza—with a cute little Reddit alien logo engraved into it for sale on the site. Minnesota-based Redditor "x—-x—x-x" listed the gun for $1150 last week on Reddit's Gunsforsale section, where fans of memes and viral videos have been loading up on firearms before Obama orders FEMA to confiscate them all. (Online gun sales between individuals are generally legal, as long as they are shipped to a federally licensed firearms dealer.)
Reddit's gun-swapping board, /r/Gunsforsale, is a little-known section of Reddit which nonetheless boasts over 3,000 subscribers and a daily rotation of firearms listsings. Unsurprisingly, the libertarian-leaning Reddit has a strong gun culture, anchored by the /r/guns subreddit, with over 100,000 subscribers. This has earned the ire of some anti-gun Redditors, who have appealed to administrators to ban gun sales on Reddit in the wake of the Newtown massacre. This hasn't happened, yet. We know how Reddit administrators feel about the 1st amendment; we may soon learn their thoughts on the 2nd.