HOLLY, VT –– Bobby Richards, the owner of Crossfire Arms, LLC, is threatening to sue the anti-Second Amendment group Everytown for Gun Safety after the organization used watermarked images of his merchandise in one of their reports alleging that he was selling firearms illegally.
It all started when Everytown for Gun Safety, which is primarily financed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, asserted in a report on online gun advertising in Vermont that more than 1,000 ads were from unlicensed gun dealers. The report hoped to highlight that many online gun sales do not require criminal background checks.
However, Everytown’s dishonest practices caught up with the organization once again when it was pointed out that many of the sellers listed in the report were, in fact, licensed firearms dealers. The report made fact checking easy, as many of the graphics were lifted from ads by gun shops that watermark images of their merchandise
Crossfire Arms, one of the companies whose images were lifted for the report, is not taking the assertion that they are breaking federal law lying down.
Richard’s attorney, Rachel Baird, told the Burlington Free Press, “The way we see it they used his firearms and used his company’s logo and held him out as an unlicensed Vermont resident and business selling online to people including criminals.”
Even though Everytown corrected some of the information in its report in the form of an editor’s note, Baird pointed out that “In the age of Internet, a taint on one’s reputation really never goes away no matter how many disclaimers are posted, especially when the disclaimer is generic and fails to reference specifically where the errors occurred, who was impacted, how many were impacted, and in Bobby’s case whether the disclaimer specifically addressed him and Crossfire.”
For more information on Everytown for Gun Safety’s antics (as well as their sister organization, Moms Demand Action), check out the links here, here and here.
