Originally posted by Triad
dd-b, does it matter if it's a part of their written policy? The fact that they won't accept them, but don't have the fortitude to admit it speaks volumes about their character.
Yes, it matters whether it's part of their public policy, precisely for the reason you give in your next sentence.
Although "character" isn't the attribute of theirs I would impugn with this decision. Actually, it's a sign of their strong character that they're willing to stand up to the extremely noisy pressure the firearms lobby tends to bring to bear on people like that. Strength of character does not correlate well with agreement on values!
Seriously, it's rhetorically much better if you can point to formal policy against firearms ads, if it's there. If it's not there, you make do with what you can of course.
Here's their guideline page on acceptable ad content
https://adwords.google.com/select/guidelines.html, and it doesn't say anything about acceptable and unacceptable types of business. It does talk about accepting sexually-explicit ads (and not displaying them to people with "safe search" set).
Is it possible that people simply haven't taken out such ads with Google? Has anybody tried to place an ad and been refused? It'd be tragic to get them pissed off at the gun community if it turns out they've done nothing against us. We could
turn them against us by spreading a false rumor.
Would somebody from the staff like to try buying some keywords on google and see what happens? If they're blocked the experiment will cost nothing, and if they're just unsold then the experiment can be pretty cheap. Although I'm unemployed at the moment, I'd be willing to make the experiment myself if I had permission. (buy keywords pointing to this forum).
