What the heck, Arms List? No longer free to post guns for sale.

[TheHarleyB]

I saw an email about a new and improved account type a couple weeks ago and ignored it. When I went to post a gun on Armslist today I got the nag screen about upgrading to get more features but it let me close the pop up. Clicking the "create listing" button brought the upgrade screen back. I guess you just can't post at all without shelling out the money for a "premium" account.

With the facebook gun groups gone and now Armslist being pay-to-play, I guess we're left with gun shows, which all suck anymore. Great.

[Glockzilla3K]

It was free for a long time. Guess they wanted to finally make some money. It sucks but Gun Broker, Ebay, and most other online sales places take a cut of what you sell something for.

[TheHarleyB]

It wasn't ever really "free". It's always been loaded with advertisements and there were already paid accounts for people/businesses that want to sell more than a couple guns at a time.

It's way worse than what you describe. They're not just taking a cut from sale prices or charging a listing fee. They're charging you $7 per month to do ANYTHING.

Not only can you not list anything for sale without being a paid member, you can't even CONTACT A SELLER without being a paid member! They killed the site for private sales, which was probably their point anyway. Armslist is done. How many people are going to pay that price for the privilege of being able to contact a seller to buy a used gun? Once sellers figure that out, how many are going to pay the price to list a gun that people can't contact them to buy it?

You can still contact paid premium FFL vendors, so I guess it still works like an online store front for them, but I don't think many people are using Armslist for that. I've seen a lot of posts online over the years of people complaining about FFLs being on Armslist anyway and they turn on the filter to not even show them.

This is the message that the site shows:

Welcome to the NEW Armslist.com. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we have had to move forward and take the site in a slightly different direction. Fortunately, despite this, we are working hard to make the site MUCH better for law abiding Americans, and MUCH worse for those that are not law abiding Americans. Scammers have tried to prey upon Armslist users in the past, and while we may not eradicate their presence 100%, we will eradicate the vast majority. People have complained of impolite offers and communications from users with bad manners. That will be nearly eradicated with the new version of the site. And lastly, the financial, emotional, human, and other costs of the never-ending legal assaults on Armslist have made it impossible for us to keep the site free in the way it was in the past. Thank you for your support, and welcome to the new Armslist.com.

Please upgrade your free account with premium personal account to unlock the features.

I saw another statement from them that claimed they're being sued by Brady Campaign "again" but I can't find it now.

[GunLink]

We have an online marketplace here on the forums, but we never really launched it or pushed it much. Doing that on general firearm forums, especially smaller boards, is tough because it doesn't get the traffic of people looking to buy/sell/trade that a dedicated site does versus people who are just there to read and talk about guns. It's even tougher since everyone's geographically dispersed, so it hurts FTF deals and you are back to shipping to an FFL anyway and someone has to eat the shipping and transfer costs.

[TheHarleyB]

The real kicker is that they still have this on the front page. 🙄

[Lebowski]

I guess people are paying I saw a rifle I wanted but couldn't contact the seller.

[benchrest308]

It looks like people are just putting their phone number or email on the post in my area.

[masfonos]

It looks like people are just putting their phone number or email on the post in my area.

I guess people are paying I saw a rifle I wanted but couldn't contact the seller.

Both are going on here. There's less listings than there used to be but there's still a decent number of them. If I had to sell something I might consider shelling out a few bucks to list it instead of taking a lowball offer from a LGS but I sure as hell wouldn't pay for the privilege of contacting the seller. A lot of sellers are apparently hoping that people will but the smart guys are including their contact info in the description.

It's all just a part of the slow crawl to drive sales underground to eventually get rid of legal private FTF sales.