Salesforce, the San Francisco-based business software company, has been working behind the scenes to pressure retailers to stop selling “military-style” firearms — or stop using their software. The Washington Post reports, “The pressure Salesforce is exerting on those retailers — barring them from using its technology to market products, manage customer service operations and fulfill orders — puts them in a difficult position. Camping World, for example, spends more than $1 million a year on Salesforce’s e-commerce software, according to one analyst estimate. Switching to another provider now could cost the company double that to migrate data, reconfigure systems and retrain employees.”

Mark Oliva, Second Amendment advocate and public-affairs director of the National Shooting Sports Foundations, called Salesforce’s anti-firearm ultimatum a “corporate-policy virtue signal” that discriminates against gun owners. “It is a very chilling effect when a company as large as Salesforce puts out a policy like this,” Oliva stated. Then again, he added, “A policy like this is not surprising from a company based in that part of the country.”

Salesforce’s new policy bars customers from using their software to sell semiautomatic firearms, “magazines capable of accepting more than 10 rounds,” and “multi-burst trigger devices.”

This kind of corporate crackdown is a growing problem that clearly threatens First and Second Amendment rights. That companies may now begin dictating how their products are to be used after having been lawfully purchased introduces a slippery slope that goes far beyond the selling of firearms. For example, it isn’t hard to imagine a company dictating what types of beverages a retailer can sell using its software product. Like Citibank and Dick’s Sporting Goods before it, Salesforce has fired just the latest salvo in a new era of “progressive” business discrimination.