Facebook launched its Marketplace feature four years ago, allowing its more than two billion users to buy and sell almost any secondhand item by clicking a button on their home page. The private sale of many items, including guns, is specifically forbidden by Facebook rules.

But sellers are getting around that with a simple trick: They list gun cases or boxes at inflated prices. Those postings have become code for the real thing, while in many instances evading Facebook efforts to screen postings for banned items. Sellers, via private messages, describe the more valuable content, the gun itself, with would-be buyers and hash out a deal…

A spokeswoman for Facebook said the social-media giant takes immediate action against individuals caught selling guns on the Marketplace platform and removes violating content, but didn’t discuss specifics. She didn’t comment specifically on the gun-case tactic.

As noted previously, I grew up in New England when it was the Arsenal of America. My father and every one of his 7 brothers and sisters – and his father – worked in the firearms industry during some part of their working life. I grew up with what were sensible rules about firearms pre-NRA nutballism. I’m still a gun owner. This crap would have been prosecuted BITD.