There are memes floating around about how dangerous Facebook Marketplace sales can be. I’ve seen pics of tactical teams with the caption, “Going to meet some guy from Facebook Marketplace because my wife wants a $20 coffee table,” or something along those lines. People know it can be shady as hell.
And yeah, if you’re going to do business on there with someone you don’t know, you might do well to carry a firearm yourself.
The concerns aren’t exactly unfounded, as two Georgia women reportedly learned.
Two Gwinnett County women were robbed after they agreed to meet with a man after dark on Wednesday on an east Athens residential street to sell him a PlayStation game console.
The man placed the PlayStation 5 in a bag, then told the women, “I’m not gonna lie. Y’all need to get outta here.”
The thief, described in an Athens-Clarke police report as between 18 to 22 years old, then pulled up his shirt and displayed a handgun tucked in his waistband.
A police spokesperson for the Athens-Clarke Police Department said that people should always meet up at a public place, and that her department actually has a place there for meet-ups like these and for custody swaps.
Either way, you should definitely heed that advice, of course, and carrying a firearm of your own is also warranted if you can lawfully do so. Here in Georgia, we’re constitutional carry, so pretty much anyone who can own a gun can carry one lawfully, so there’s really not much excuse.
Even if you meet in a public place, a robbery like this could still take place. There are worse things that can take place as well, since most people aren’t going to exactly be paying attention to the cars at the far end of the row at their local Sam’s Club.
Of course, this isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. Facebook Marketplace is simply the latest iteration of Craigslist, which was basically the newspaper classifieds put on the internet.
Meeting up with people you don’t know shouldn’t be concerning. In a perfect world, it isn’t. The thing is, we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in this one, and that means bad people looking to prey on others.
This is one of the reasons our gun rights matter, and why everyone who can should exercise those rights.
These two women were fortunate that all they experienced was a robbery with a gun, not even pointed directly at them. The threat was real, obviously, even if it wasn’t a real gun, but they could have been taken against their will and experienced the kind of things the writers for Criminal Minds would balk at talking about.
Luckily, that wasn’t an issue. It could have been, though, and that’s why people need to take precautions.
A combination of public spaces, the Second Amendment, and listening to your instincts when things seem off can all combine to keep you safe when buying or selling on Facebook Marketplace.
If that happens enough, maybe the predators will go elsewhere to look for their prey and let the rest of us live our own lives.
Editor’s Note: President Trump and Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.
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