# Marley: Gun Grabber is not restricted to the Pit. **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [January 13, 2013, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086 "2013-01-13T19:41:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Strainger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/strainger/32/244_2.png) [@Strainger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strainger)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/181 "2013-01-16T14:23:40Z")
It’s simple, folks. The bar has been set. If you see a term as harsh as or harsher than “gun grabber” in Great Debates, then simply click that little link to report the post. Report report report. ---
**Author:** ![bucketybuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@bucketybuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bucketybuck)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/182 "2013-01-16T14:40:04Z")
> [@Strainger](#): > > It’s simple, folks. The bar has been set. If you see a term as harsh as or harsher than “gun grabber” in Great Debates, then simply click that little link to report the post. > > Report report report. Considering how frivolous some of the ATMB threads are I would be very surprised if the report function is not already being spammed with reports about every little thing. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/183 "2013-01-16T15:00:04Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I accused you of saying what you said. If you want me to defend my interpretation of the comment (which is why I moderated it), I will: I thought you deliberately made an overly broad and rather ludicrous comment about people who support gun registration because you wanted to accuse them of supporting even more draconian measures despite the inconvenient fact that they hadn’t said they supported those measures, and because you wanted to accuse them of having the wrong priorities even though none of them had advocated punishing any group of people _instead_ of any other group. No one had said gun owners should be punished if crimes were committed with weapons stolen from their homes. So your post didn’t bear much relationship to anything that was being discussed. You accused people of supporting some things based on some other, barely-related or unrelated things. If you had made the point the way you made it in post #151 of this thread, maybe I would have thought you believed your comment was pertinent to the subject. Based on what I read, I didn’t think that. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/184 "2013-01-16T15:05:16Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > If “gun grabber” merits mod action, then how about [“motherfucking NRA scumbags”](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15904097&postcount=27)? from [this thread in Great Debates](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=15904097#post15904097)? > [@Oakminster](#): > > And how about [“gun scum”](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15904103&postcount=28) from the same thread? I’ve modded both posts. “Motherfucking scumbag” is definitely more appropriate for the Pit than a Great Debates. “Scum” by itself isn’t as bad, but still. And both comments are targeted vaguely and could apply to the leadership of the NRA or everybody in it or (in the case of **Der Trihs** ’ post) everyone who opposes new gun laws, and both are likely to offend people without contributing to the debate. ---
**Author:** ![PlainJain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5daacb/32.png) [@PlainJain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlainJain)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/185 "2013-01-16T15:18:39Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > I’m going to wait for Marley to get back to us and respond, rather than attempt to read his mind and respond for him. You were being asked to explain yourself not read some other posters mind. Nice try though. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/186 "2013-01-16T15:28:32Z")
> [@PlainJain](#): > > You were being asked to explain yourself not read some other posters mind. Nice try though. My explanation is that I don’t need your permission to either ask a question or have a different opinion. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/187 "2013-01-16T15:29:43Z")
Nobody asked me, but I don’t really see how “gun grabber” is offensive. Maybe well-poisoning, in GQ, but hardly offensive. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/188 "2013-01-16T15:33:00Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Nobody asked me, but I don’t really see how “gun grabber” is offensive. Maybe well-poisoning, in GQ, but hardly offensive. Perhaps. Should excessive well-poisoning on _either_ side be moderated, if it tends to be a major blockade to actual debate? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/189 "2013-01-16T15:38:40Z")
In principle, sure. However, that post was in GD, and as far as I can tell nobody actually reacted to it. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/190 "2013-01-16T15:45:42Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > In principle, sure. However, that post was in GD, and as far as I can tell nobody actually reacted to it. Which brings us back to the question as to whether mods should be proactive or reactive. If a poster does something that is intended to disrupt, should the mods wait until an actual disruption occurs to react to it? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/191 "2013-01-16T16:05:01Z")
Why do they have to be either proactive or reactive all the time? They can be (and generally are) proactive with regard to actual disruptive stuff, and are generally pretty passive about minor quibbles like this one. ---
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/192 "2013-01-16T16:25:11Z")
So in the thread linked by **Oakminster** above **Marley** says: > [@"An End To the Ban on Gun-Violence Studies"?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-end-to-the-ban-on-gun-violence-studies/647032/41): > > See above. Strong opinions are welcome, but the vitriol has to be coupled to something that contributes to the debate. So according to **Marley** vitriol is “A-Ok” as long it’s coupled to something that contributes to the debate. Yet in post 12 of this thread **Marley** says: > [@Marley23](#): > > Seriously, it’s a mod note for tone. So **Oakminster** got modded for tone yet you tell another poster that vitriol is fine as long as it somehow relates to the debate. So it seems to me that “tone” was not really the reason Oak got modded. Because according to Marley you can be all mean and vitriolic but as long as you tie that to the debate then everything is hunky-dory. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/193 "2013-01-16T16:35:42Z")
> [@Drunky\_Smurf](#): > > So **Oakminster** got modded for tone yet you tell another poster that vitriol is fine as long as it somehow relates to the debate. Yes. The conclusion is that not every vitriolic comment is out of bounds in GD. There are limits based on the offensiveness of the characterization and its relevance to the topic. > [@](#): > > So it seems to me that “tone” was not really the reason Oak got modded. Because according to Marley you can be all mean and vitriolic but as long as you tie that to the debate then everything is hunky-dory. I didn’t think **Oakminster** ’s post was tied to the debate. I mentioned this upthread: it appeared to me to be a series of attacks on positions nobody had actually taken in the thread. I do see that when **Oakminster** talked about people being punished, he didn’t mean what I thought he meant. But I don’t think his actual meaning was in any way obvious based on the content of the thread to that point. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/194 "2013-01-16T17:10:44Z")
> [@Gun registration](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-registration/647073/2): > > It wouldn’t help reduce any crimes at all except for the one that the anti-gun rights crowd considers the ultimate crime: owning a gun! > > Those people don’t give a rats behind about reducing crime, or safety, or anything even remotely related. They want a completely disarmed populace. They don’t want you to have any firearms what-so-ever. Not for self defense, not for the security of a free state, not for hunting, not even for target practice. **NOTHING!** And they are using incrementalism tactics to achieve this goal. Registration would be a powerful tool towards their goal. > > The gun owner who buys into the ridiculous arguments that background checks, licensing, waiting periods, bans, etc. will somehow make us safer is a damn fool and not worthy of the freedom he is surrendering. > > Imagine we woke up tomorrow and all privately held firearms had vanished into thin air, and after that all we were allowed to own were single shot Muskets from 1776. The minute someone committed a crime with one (and in a country of 300+ million it wouldn’t take real long) the anti-gunner would be screaming to ban those. > > Unless it’s an admission that they want us completely disarmed, do not buy into anything these people say. It’s a lie! > [@Marley23](#): > > Nobody in the thread had proposed confiscating any guns. They did discuss the concept of registration, and **Oakminster** responded by calling them “gun grabbers” and saying they wanted to punish gun owners instead of killers. It was entirely useless. > [@Marley23](#): > > I accused you of saying what you said. If you want me to defend my interpretation of the comment (which is why I moderated it), I will: I thought you deliberately made an overly broad and rather ludicrous comment about people who support gun registration because you wanted to accuse them of supporting even more draconian measures despite the inconvenient fact that they hadn’t said they supported those measures, and because you wanted to accuse them of having the wrong priorities even though none of them had advocated punishing any group of people _instead_ of any other group. No one had said gun owners should be punished if crimes were committed with weapons stolen from their homes. So your post didn’t bear much relationship to anything that was being discussed. You accused people of supporting some things based on some other, barely-related or unrelated things. If you had made the point the way you made it in post #151 of this thread, maybe I would have thought you believed your comment was pertinent to the subject. Based on what I read, I didn’t think that. This is pretty ridiculous. I think these comments by **pkbites** prior to **Oakminster** and **Ludovic** were more inflammatory that Oak’s “gun grabber” label and Ludovic’s dismissal of pk’s remarks as stupid. > [@Gun registration](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-registration/647073/2): > > It wouldn’t help reduce any crimes at all except for the one that the anti-gun rights crowd considers the ultimate crime: owning a gun! > > Those people don’t give a rats behind about reducing crime, or safety, or anything even remotely related. They want a completely disarmed populace. They don’t want you to have any firearms what-so-ever. Not for self defense, not for the security of a free state, not for hunting, not even for target practice. **NOTHING!** And they are using incrementalism tactics to achieve this goal. Registration would be a powerful tool towards their goal. > > The gun owner who buys into the ridiculous arguments that background checks, licensing, waiting periods, bans, etc. will somehow make us safer is a damn fool and not worthy of the freedom he is surrendering. > > Imagine we woke up tomorrow and all privately held firearms had vanished into thin air, and after that all we were allowed to own were single shot Muskets from 1776. The minute someone committed a crime with one (and in a country of 300+ million it wouldn’t take real long) the anti-gunner would be screaming to ban those. > > Unless it’s an admission that they want us completely disarmed, do not buy into anything these people say. It’s a lie! Those are also “overly broad ludicrous comments” that are not advocated by anyone in the thread. Yet he gets a pass on his assertions about the motivations of his opponents. I understand you trying to preemptively save the tone of the thread. I’m not sure how reasonable it was to hit those labels so early, when similar comments abound in GD and nothing is done about them. But your stated rationale for addressing **Oakminster** ’s comments just doesn’t match reality. Both because **pkbites** did the same thing and got nothing from you, and because the topic of holding gun owners responsible for crimes committed by people who steal their weapons has been advocated on this board. I was just reading the thread on threadspotting about “my guns fell through the ice” where that was seriously proposed. So Oak didn’t pull that out of thin air, if he did post it in a different thread on the same topic (gun control, which is where that MPSIMS thread went). I don’t think you were being intentionally biased, but I think you erred on this call. Of course, all you did was say “keep the tone GD worthy”, but really I don’t see where Oak or Ludovic did anything not GD worthy. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/195 "2013-01-16T17:15:36Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > This is pretty ridiculous. I think these comments by **pkbites** prior to **Oakminster** and **Ludovic** were more inflammatory that Oak’s “gun grabber” label and Ludovic’s dismissal of pk’s remarks as stupid. I think you make a good point. I went back and reread the thread last night, and the first 15 posts or so contain a lot of garbage. It’s primarily strawman arguments from gun control opponents instead of actual responses to the OP. You could argue that screwed up the discussion more than the words “gun grabber” or **Ludovic** calling an argument “stupid.” ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2013, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/196 "2013-01-18T04:55:40Z")
I just don’t understand why the very basics elude the mods here. When you moderate someone for something that you haven’t moderated others for, or when you’ve ACTUALLY SAID THE SAME THING YOURSELF, it comes across that you are moderating not out of some sense of enforcing rules, but based on people you don’t like. And, surprise, that offends people. Since you want to make such a big deal about tone, I’ll point out that your tone towards **magellan** was horrible from the start. And I do not like the precedent of giving posters warning because they refuse to agree with you. Even if you argue that his initial post was wrong, how in the world do you justify disagreeing with your moderation on it to be a Warnable offense? What specifically did he say in those last few posts that was Warnable? There’s no point in Warning anyone if you aren’t going to tell us what he did wrong. These types of moderating decisions only bolster people like **Oakminster** who thinks you moderate based on your feelings or biases rather than any desire to actually keep the board on track. According to what you said to me long ago in PM, it is part of a mod’s job to know when to walk away. So walk away. Don’t use your mod powers to win an argument. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2013, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/197 "2013-01-28T13:53:14Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I just don’t understand why the very basics elude the mods here. When you moderate someone for something that you haven’t moderated others for, or when you’ve ACTUALLY SAID THE SAME THING YOURSELF, it comes across that you are moderating not out of some sense of enforcing rules, but based on people you don’t like. And, surprise, that offends people. > > Since you want to make such a big deal about tone, I’ll point out that your tone towards **magellan** was horrible from the start. And I do not like the precedent of giving posters warning because they refuse to agree with you. Even if you argue that his initial post was wrong, how in the world do you justify disagreeing with your moderation on it to be a Warnable offense? What specifically did he say in those last few posts that was Warnable? There’s no point in Warning anyone if you aren’t going to tell us what he did wrong. > > These types of moderating decisions only bolster people like **Oakminster** who thinks you moderate based on your feelings or biases rather than any desire to actually keep the board on track. According to what you said to me long ago in PM, it is part of a mod’s job to know when to walk away. So walk away. Don’t use your mod powers to win an argument. Evidently, certain words qualify as Warnable, but it’s a secret list. I’ve presented a list to him several times now and he refuses to answer. Nice little gig he’s got going there. This heavy-handed pre-emptive moderation is unhelpful in the extreme. I’m still amazed that ha considers “prig” is out of bounds. It’s absurd. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2013, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/198 "2013-01-28T14:11:29Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I didn’t think **Oakminster** ’s post was tied to the debate. I mentioned this upthread: it appeared to me to be a series of attacks on positions nobody had actually taken in the thread. So in the future, can we trust that in abortion threads, any poster who mentions that a pro-life position is nothing but hatred of women, that comment will be moderated as well since no poster in the thread took that position? How about a thread on the budget deal? If a poster says that Republicans just want to protect their rich friends, will that get a note since nobody in the thread said that? IOW, is this some new rule that GD threads are only limited to the subject matter discussed in the thread itself with no outside material allowed? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2013, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/199 "2013-01-28T14:57:50Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > Evidently, certain words qualify as Warnable, but it’s a secret list. None of this is true. > [@jtgain](#): > > IOW, is this some new rule that GD threads are only limited to the subject matter discussed in the thread itself with no outside material allowed? No. If you have questions about some other insults or the moderation of other comments, please start a new thread. I’m closing this one since it’s been tortured enough. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2013, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086/200 "2013-01-28T15:28:29Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > None of this is true. Oh, my mistake. Can you provide that list again, then? I must have missed it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marley-gun-grabber-is-not-restricted-to-the-pit/647086.md?page=11)