Salesforce made a change to the acceptable-use policy for its e-commerce software this week, adding a range of firearms and accessories to the list of products it forbids customers from selling.
Salesforce customers whose businesses sell military-style automatic rifles, semi-automatic weapons, 3D-printed guns, high-capacity magazines, or a range of other accessories associated with automatic and semi-automatic guns will now be banned from using Salesforce software. The move appears to be a decidedly political one in which a software company is using its influence and value to effect change in the broader gun marketplace — and potentially reduce the number of these types of weapons being sold.
One large customer that the company has reportedly been in talks with about ending sales of semi-automatic weapons is Camping World. As the Washington Post reports, Camping World spends $1 million per year on Salesforce software, and migrating to new software could cost the company double that — not to mention the technical headaches that such a migration would incur.
A spokesperson for Salesforce tells The Verge, "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."
Mark Oliva, the public affairs director of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, tells the Post that this is "corporate-policy virtue signaling" that discriminates against gun owners, but "not surprising from a company based in that part of the country."
Yes, Salesforce is based in San Francisco, and we're all a bunch of pesky liberals trying to save the country from an epidemic of mass murder that isn't affecting any other country in the world on the level of ours.
Large brands have already been pulling back from the sales of these types of weapons without such pushes, however. Walmart ended its sale of military-style weapons in 2015, and it joined Dick's Sporting Goods in 2018 in stopping the sales of all weapons to people under 21. Dick's Sporting Goods stopped selling all assault-style weapons last year following the Parkland shooting, and in March, the company announced it was pulling all guns off the shelves of about one-sixth of its stores, citing declining sales of hunting equipment.