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PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release: February 4, 2003
Detroit Newspapers Declare Ceasefire on Classified Handgun Ads
Detroit, MI – Detroit’s two largest daily newspapers, the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News, will no longer accept advertisements for handguns in the classified sections of the newspapers. The newspapers will continue to accept classified ads for long guns – rifles and shotguns.
The Detroit newspapers changed their classified advertising policy following a meeting with the National Campaign to Close the Newspaper Loophole and local Million Mom March chapters last December. The campaign asks newspapers across the country to voluntarily stop taking classified ads for firearms from unlicensed sellers. The campaign is not opposed to newspapers taking classified ads for firearms from federally licensed firearms dealers because licensed dealers are required to conduct criminal background checks on all buyers.
“The issue is not guns but the process,” said John Johnson, coordinator of the campaign. “Unlike gun sales through licensed firearms dealers, there are no background checks on private gun sales through the classifieds. Thus, classified ads in newspapers from unlicensed sellers provide a convenient method for felons, domestic abusers, the mentally ill, and other persons prohibited by law from possessing firearms to purchase guns without a background check. In an age of increasing concern for public safety, it is difficult to defend a newspaper’s part in the private sale of firearms without a background check of the would-be buyer.”
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