@What_Exit closed a thread about the Oxford shooter in Great Debates.
I’m not here to debate that decision but wondering if a new thread on the same topic can be started or if the topic is done for here?
That raises the question: What was that thread about? By the end, it was all about guns, not the Oxford shooter.
FWIW I would start a new thread that is on topic but, of course, it could drift again and annoy the mods.
I am a bit dismayed that so many people complained (as in, pressed the button for it) on the thread that was closed.
That thread is 560 posts long. The last four consecutive posts discussing the Oxford shooter (you know, the ostensible subject of the thread according to its title?) were at 490-493. So the thread had gone down the gun control rabbithole (chasing some lions, tigers and bears, oh my; plus deer, en route) for just under 70 posts. And even before posts 490 et seq, there was a lively discussion of guns don’t kill people, video games kill people.
If that’s not a hijack, I don’t know what is. I didn’t report it; I just put the thread on mute, as it no longer was addressing its ostensible subject.
I didn’t read the thread at all, but just glancing thru it now, I’m surprised that didn’t generate enough flags for a mod to step in and call the gun control topic off limits. Not to mention an outright insult or two. Mods are usually really good at stopping hijacks if they are reported in time. Sometimes they are just too far gone to save.
I don’t think the mods would care if you started another thread about the shooting. Just put “not about gun control” in the title. I’m not sure how many takers you would get since most people aren’t going to want to repost all their opinions again.
While I think the discussion was probably done, in no way was the topic deemed off-limits. But, I will suggest, don’t just start it up, bring something new to the discussion.
If I see a thread start like this I will try to make it clear early and often that gun control is not to be part of the thread.
This is a good idea:
Maybe I’ll make a “Gun Control off-topic dump thread” to move off-topic gun control and related pool and bomb posts. 
No, this is a good idea. 
Too bad we can’t have an omnibus gun control thread to keep it out of all the others. It would be different if anyone ever had something new to say about gun control from either side. Instead, it’s just the same argument over and over for twenty years now. Often by all the same people.
I might suggest you consider a designated server for this one 
The problem is, if you have an event like this that is fundamentally causally connected to the easy availability of guns, what exactly is the scope of discussion going to be? This is supposed to be a debate, but it seems to me that it can be little more than a factual breaking news thread. If you’re going to ban any discussion of how easy access to firearms was the root cause, then you must also ban any discussion of how anything else was a contributory cause. That includes bad parenting, school policy on inspecting bags, mental illness, video games, everything. Otherwise you’re implicitly granting the NRA-style narrative that it’s about everything except gun control.
But even then, that thread had turned into a general gun control thread. Not much about the thread topic in the last 65 posts.
If it’s a debate about how and why the shooting happened, then it SHOULD be a gun control debate. I don’t see how you can even talk narrowly about what the parents did wrong and whether they should be prosecuted without talking about gun culture and (lack of) gun control.
What was your conception of what an “on topic” discussion would be?
I know you don’t intend it that way, but this just sounds like an echo of the “this is not the time”, “don’t politicize this tragedy” nonsense. We’re supposed to talk about the enormous piles of poop without mentioning the elephant in the room.
Which is why I didn’t do much with the thread, but by the end it was no longer about the incident in the OP and just a free ranging and “very tired debate” about gun control. Oh, and generating a lot of issues, insults and flags.
Just because gun control debate is part of the issue, doesn’t mean it should overwhelm the thread.
I am seriously tempted to suspend the next poster that brings up pools in a thread about a shooting. I wouldn’t be justified to, but I am tempted.
Gun Control and/or gun rights is the elephant in the room in all shooting threads. But it has to be possible to discuss such cases without it devolving into gun control mostly.
Better to close a thread that had run its course than hand out several warnings and write up a bunch of modnotes and staff notes.
So if it gets started again, I will squash gun control debate in said thread. Know that ahead of time.
But that’s where we part company. If the causes underlying an event are to be debated at all, I don’t think it’s appropriate to restrict debate only to some subset of causes. Otherwise you are implicitly enabling a narrative that the causes that are out of bounds in the thread are unimportant.
If people find gun control a tiresome subject, they should stay out of any thread that purports to debate the underlying reasons for school shootings.
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How did the shooter get the gun?
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What kind of gun was it?
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Who, if anyone assisted the shooter to get the gun?
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Where did the shooter have the gun?
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Did anyone else know the shooter had the gun?
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Could anyone else have taken steps to prevent the shooter from using the gun(parents, teachers, other students, police/security guards)?
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How powerful was the gun, in terms of number of rounds available, bolt-action, semi or full auto?
Lots of questions that could be asked about guns related to the particular case.
But if someone wants to comment generally on the laws and gun culture relating to any of those points, that’s what GD is for. This tragedy could certainly be an excellent jumping-off point for any gun control questions arising from the shooting.
The thread in question was in GD.
I have absolutely no dispute with there also being the type of thread that’s focused exclusively on what exactly happened, the specifics of the event, extending to the facts of who could have done what and who was prohibited from doing what under current law. A thread that avoids discussing causes, and talks about what did happen rather than what should happen, what will happen under current law rather than what should happen. There is one.
But any thread that discusses “should” questions or the cause of the event is going to be a gun control thread.
From the OP of the thread in question:
So are these charges justified do you think, or is this just a needless persecution of gun owners?
Personally, while I have not read the applicable statutes, I think it is entirely justified and demonstrates why gun owners should be responsible for their injury and death caused by their firearms when they act irresponsibly with them.
How on earth is this not a gun culture / gun legislation / gun control debate?
And thread drift is a problem because…?
There’s a difference between bringing up gun control in a mass shooting thread (as @Riemann so eloquently put it, discussing the elephant in the thread about the giant pile of shit that the elephant just crapped out) and bringing up pools or whether the term “developing nation” is racist or any of the other go to topics that certain usual suspects intentionally use to derail and shut down any thread regarding gun control on these forums. Just my 2 cents.
It doesn’t have to be. Sometimes it takes a thread in a new and interesting direction. Sometimes it’s temporary and drifts back on topic. But gun control seems to overwhelm everything else in the thread. It’s often the same people using the same arguments they’ve used dozens of times before. No one, either side, brings anything new to the table.
Of course, I haven’t done a deep study on the subject, but I think it drives away a lot of posters that were originally interested in the thread. I know it does to me. Read one gun control thread here and you’ve read them all.
For the record, thread drift is of least concern for older long threads, MPSIMS and The Pit. (I might be corrected by more experienced mods on this, but this is what I’ve seen and heard.)
In GD it is strongly discouraged though.
Off-Topic, joke posts and one liners in FQ before the OP has been answered are also strongly discouraged.