Terms of Service

What Classified MP is

Classified MP is a classified advertising board. California residents post advertisements for firearms and accessories they own and want to sell, other California residents read those advertisements, and the two can send each other messages through the site.

That is the whole of the service. Everything that happens after two people agree to meet happens between them and a licensed dealer, and we are not there for any of it.

What we are not

We are not a party to any transaction. We are not a seller, a buyer, an agent, a broker, a consignee, an auctioneer, or a licensed firearms dealer. We do not represent either side.

We never process or hold payment. There is no checkout, no cart, no escrow and no account balance on this site. If you pay for something you found here, you pay the other person directly and we have no record of it and no part in it.

We never arrange shipping or delivery, and we never take custody of a firearm. No item advertised here passes through our hands at any point.

Because we are not a party to your transaction, we cannot reverse it, refund it, guarantee it, or make the other person do what they said they would do. Please read the rest of this document with that in mind — it is the single fact most of it follows from.

Who may use it

You may use Classified MP if you are 21 years of age or older, you are a resident of California, and it is lawful for you to possess a firearm. You confirm the first two when you create an account, and we keep a record of that confirmation.

You must not use this site if you are prohibited from possessing a firearm under federal or California law. We do not and cannot check this, so it rests entirely on you, and the licensed dealer who runs the background check is the point at which it is actually verified.

One account per person. Do not share your password, and tell us if you think someone else has it.

Every firearm transfer happens at a licensed dealer

California Penal Code section 27545 requires private-party firearm transfers to be conducted through a licensed dealer, who processes the Dealer Record of Sale and the background check. This is not our policy. It is the law, and it applies to you whether or not you found the other person here.

You agree to complete any transfer that begins on this site in person, in California, at a licensed dealer. You agree not to use this site to arrange a transfer that avoids one.

We list dealers as a convenience, from the federal licence file published by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. We have no relationship with any of them, we do not recommend any of them, we receive nothing from any of them, and we cannot promise that a dealer in that list is still open, still licensed, or willing to process a private-party transfer. Call first.

We do not verify anyone

We do not verify identity. We do not run background checks. We do not confirm that a person is who they say they are, that they live where they say they live, that they own what they are advertising, that it is what they say it is, or that they may lawfully possess it.

We do not inspect items, we never see them, and a listing on this site is not an endorsement of the item, the price, or the person. Automated checks refuse some listings outright, which the Community Standards describe — but a listing getting through those checks means only that it did not trip one of them.

Treat everyone you meet here the way you would treat a stranger from any classified advertisement, because that is what they are.

Your listings and your messages

What you write stays yours. By posting it you give us permission to store it and to show it to other users of the site, which is what posting means; we do not claim ownership of it, and we do not license it to anybody else.

You are responsible for everything you post, including that you have the right to post the photographs and that what you say about an item is accurate. We strip location metadata from photographs before storing them, but we do not check what is in the picture.

You keep a copy of anything you would be sorry to lose. Listings expire, and a removed listing stops being visible to you as well as to everybody else.

What you may not do here

The Community Standards page says what is not allowed, in detail, and forms part of these Terms. It is written from what the site actually refuses, so it is the accurate list rather than a general one.

In short: nothing that bypasses a licensed dealer, nothing on the prohibited list, no shipping a firearm to a buyer, no lying about what an item is, and nothing that belongs to somebody else.

How we moderate

We may refuse a listing, remove one, restrict an account, or close an account. When an automated check refuses a listing it tells you which rule and why, and it keeps what you wrote so you can correct it.

You may appeal any decision. If you can still sign in, the appeal button is on your account page next to the decision itself. If your account is closed and you cannot sign in, write to appeals@classifiedmp.com.

Every moderation decision is written to a permanent record that we cannot edit or delete, including who made it and why. That record exists so that a decision about you can be reviewed rather than merely asserted.

How listings are ordered

We do not recommend listings to you, and we do not try to work out what you might want. Nothing on this site is personalised. Two people who load the same page see the same listings in the same order, and we never use your location, your browsing history, what you have saved, or what you searched for last time to decide what to show you.

You choose how results are ordered — newest first, or nearest to a ZIP code you type in. Those are your instructions, they are visible in the address bar, and the same instruction produces the same page for anybody.

The one ranked section on the home page is ordered by a fixed arithmetic rule from how many times each listing has been viewed and how many conversations it has started. The rule is written on the page itself, it is the same rule for everyone, and it does not know who is looking. We do not use what people save privately as a ranking signal, and we have built the site so that we could not.

That is how it works today, and it is deliberate: a classified board publishes what people post; it does not steer a particular buyer toward a particular seller. If we ever change how listings are ordered we will change this section with it, and tell account holders the way "Changes to these Terms" describes.

Disputes between users

If something goes wrong between you and another user — the item was not as described, somebody did not turn up, money changed hands and nothing came back — that is between the two of you, and if necessary between you and the police or a court.

We are not a mediator and we hold no money to refund. We will respond to lawful requests for records, and you can report a user or a listing from the page it is on, or write to complaints@classifiedmp.com. Reporting is how we find out; it is not a claims process.

What this costs

Nothing. There are no fees, no paid placement, and no way to pay for a better position in any list. If that ever changes we will say so here before it does, and the ranking rule described above would have to change with it.

The service is provided as it is

Classified MP is provided as it is and as it happens to be available, without warranties of any kind, whether stated or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement.

We do not promise that the site will be available, that it will be free of errors, that any listing or user is genuine, or that anything you read here is accurate. It is run by one person on one server and it will sometimes be down.

Limits on our liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or any harm arising from your dealings with another user, from an item you bought or sold, or from anything either of you did before, during or after a transfer.

Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to one hundred United States dollars. We charge nothing for this service, which is the reason that figure is what it is.

Nothing in these Terms limits any liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

Your responsibility to us

If your use of this site causes a claim against us — because of something you posted, something you did to another user, or a law you broke — you agree to cover the cost of defending and resolving it, to the extent the law allows.

Ending your use

You may stop using Classified MP at any time, and you may ask us to close your account by writing to privacy@classifiedmp.com. The Privacy Policy describes what we keep after that and why some of it has to be kept.

We may restrict or close an account that breaks these Terms or the Community Standards, or where we are required to. The sections above about moderation and appeals apply.

Changes to these Terms

We will change these Terms — the version at the top of this page is a first draft and a lawyer has not read it yet. When we do, the version and its date change with it, so you can tell whether what you are reading is what you read last time.

For a change that materially affects you we will tell account holders by email before it takes effect. For a correction that does not, the new version on this page is the notice.

When you create an account we record which version of these Terms was current, together with the date. That record cannot be edited or deleted afterwards, by us or by anyone else, and you can ask us for your copy of it.

Accounts created before these Terms were published have no such record, because there was nothing to accept at the time. We would rather say that than write a record of a consent that never happened.

Accepting a version is not the same as accepting every later one. If a future version asked you to give up something substantial — the right to bring a claim in court, for instance — we would have to ask you again rather than treat your earlier acceptance as covering it.

Law and venue

These Terms are governed by the law of the State of California. Any dispute about them belongs in the state or federal courts located in California.

Classified MP serves California only. It is not offered to residents of any other state and we do not intend it to be used from one.

If part of this is unenforceable

If any part of these Terms cannot be enforced, the rest still applies. These Terms, together with the Community Standards and the Privacy Policy, are the whole of the agreement between us about your use of this site. You may not transfer your account or your rights under these Terms to anybody else.

How to reach us

About these Terms, a listing, or another user: complaints@classifiedmp.com.

About your own data, or to close your account: privacy@classifiedmp.com.

To appeal a decision when you cannot sign in: appeals@classifiedmp.com.