Thoughts on GD moderation change for Gun Debate threads

Great Debates
21

On that point, I fully agree with you. But how to handle the fact that the thread free-flowed into directions not intended by the thread’s OP becomes a value judgment. The problem is that this tends to happen very often. It even used to happen in MPSIMS breaking news threads about mass shootings until it was explicitly prohibited.

So we can conclude that it was an ill-conceived topic for GD and the derailing was inevitable, but I think the point that this thread is trying to address is that this devolution into open-ended gun control discussions happens so often that maybe there should be a moderation change to address it.

22

I agree.

And if we end the gun topic because we’ve done it before, then we should end all topics we’ve done before. There’s a lot of those.

23

I definitely prefer the concept of focused debate rather than an omnibus thread, not that they are mutually exclusive ideas.

Once you break away from a narrowly defined debate topic, it’s just a generic gun debate, and while many of us may get sucked into participating, it’s not exactly a fulfilling or constructive use of our time. A few brightly colored mod posts reminding us that there is, in fact, a specific topic to discuss may keep the threads interesting.

24

I agree completely, and this is one of the big challenges gun debates have not only here but on most of the rest of the internet.

Fundamentally, I just think there’s some aspects of the gun discussion which the other side is simply incapable of hearing or understanding.

For example, people who are anti-gun are often given to saying things like “Guns are designed for killing” or “The only purpose a gun has is to kill”, which might be something they personally feel but it’s factually incorrect. Despite that, they just cannot - and I don’t mean “don’t want to”, I mean “actually are incapable of” shaking their belief that every single firearm in existence, whether it’s a double-barrelled clay target shotgun, a bolt-action hunting rifle, a revolver, an AR-15, whatever, can and is only be used for killing people.

Similarly, people on the pro-gun side of the argument tend to really struggle with the idea that most people don’t think it’s actually a good thing for pretty much anyone to be able to acquire firearms - particularly military-style tacticool semi-auto rifles or handguns - “over the counter” with no (or limited) background checking, and many of them genuinely, hand on their heart believe that basic stuff like “A firearms licence” is not only Unconstitutional, but a middle finger to God Himself.

There’s basically no acceptable compromise or middle ground to be had by either side - the anti-gun people think anything more than a literal single-shot gun is too much (and even then you probably shouldn’t be allowed one if you live in a city), while a lot of the hardcore pro-gun people are legitimately upset they can’t own literal, select-fire assault rifles or other automatic weapons. Basically, the debate invariably comes down to pretty much “Machine guns for everyone” or “Gun laws that make Japan look laissez-faire”, and then the arguments get heated and personal.

I like guns. A lot. I’m also not American so I’m coming from a different cultural framework, which brings its own challenges when trying to contribute to the discussion.

I hate to say it, but if Men’s Rights is a blanket verboten subject, then broad Gun Rights/2A debates probably should be too - not because one side is “right”, but because neither side is going to agree on anything and it’s just going to devolve into unpleasantry to no constructive end anyway.

25

SHiT? :smiley:

26
Long post Largely off the narrow topic, please do not raise gun issues in this thread.

I think the most recent thread was poorly constructed, as it focused on a small percentage of gun violence, and had a binary proposal that is extreme even to most of the pro gun control posters on this board. It really was not destined for productive conversation.

However, something like “How much gun violence is acceptable before you are willing to consider increased restrictions on gun availability, and what restrictions would you accept?” would, while certainly not guaranteed not to devolve into a shitfest, at least be a more productive conversation.

I do think that looking to other countries with similar social and economic factors to see how they have dealt with gun violence has merit, while pointing out that we are not as bad as countries with governments that are not able to provide effective public safety to large swaths of their population does not.

Pointing to other public safety dangers, and how we have addressed them in the past and present to improve public safety is relevant. Pointing to the fact that there are other public safety dangers that exist, and therefore this particular public safety danger shouldn’t be addressed is not.

We really should have either an omnibus or focused debate about mental health and the drug war, but unless those are specific relevant topics addressed in an OP about guns, they should be considered hijacks.

I think that if someone calls something a clip, rather than a magazine, or describes a semi-automatic weapon as an automatic or machine gun, unless the purpose of the thread is to discuss the proper terminology of firearms, should, at most, be corrected as a matter of improving knowledge and fighting ignorance, but shouldn’t discount someone’s concerns and opinions about how gun violence affects them and their community.

I’ve long wanted to start a debate focussed towards the pro-gun control community on the board, something like, “What gun control measures do you think would be effective in reducing gun violence, and how would you implement/enforce them?” But I know that it would quickly devolve into pro-gun rights advocates derailing with statistics about pools and cars, along with appeals to 2A to declare any proposed measures as unconstitutional.

I also think that if someone wants to consider the easy availability of guns as a factor in suicide, that should be a perfectly acceptable opinion to hold, especially when there are other forms of self harm that some of the anti-gun control crowd will condemn for pages and pages.

Often the labels of the crowds reduce the atmosphere of debate. Calling a gun control advocate “anti-gun” is a false label. There are some in the gun control crowd who are anti gun, but the vast majority of us are anti gun violence. Reducing it to the binary state in order to argue against that is almost always just a strawman. I think that “pro-gun control”, and “anti-gun control” are the most descriptive and neutral terms, though I am willing to hear alternatives if there is a preference.

Anyway, the other “tired” threads are things the board has taken a position on. That 9/11 was carried out by Islamic terrorists, climate change is real, men don’t have any immediate concern about losing their rights, scientific racism has no scientific merit, and the holocaust happened are things that, while they may not be objective truths, that they may all end up being wrong in whole or in part, are topics that the board has decided to take a position on, and therefore does not need any further discussion. Putting gun control into that category would be the board declaring a final position on the topic.

So, in the end, I think that topics like, “What gun control measures would be useful?” or “Is this gun control measure (either that is being proposed by the OP or being referenced from actual legislation, enacted or proposed) useful in combating gun violence?” could, with some moderation to keep things focused, lead to productive conversations. Topics like, “Should we have gun control?” or “What would it take for you to support gun control (or gun bans)?” will be unlikely to lead to productive conversation.

I have further thoughts on the matter, but I’ve gone on for long enough at this time.

27

Could you sum up a little please, are you in favor or against a rule change?
If in favor, much as I suggested, or do you suggest a different change?

Overall, your post didn’t address the OP very well and I think runs afoul of my specific instruction:

I hope I don’t need to mention this is not a thread to talk about guns

On that note, I’m collapsing your post into a Detail Spoiler before it causes a hijack.

28

You are right and this is something that should be reduced.

29

Here is the single biggest difference, we get almost no flags about Trump threads. The comparison is not valid for that reason. Every gun thread, even the Café gun thread about Baldwin generates a lot of flags.

30

I really don’t think that I talked about guns in that post, but only about how guns are discussed on this board, which I thought was the point of the thread, and what rule changes I would think would be useful to leading towards productive conversation with fewer hijacks.

So, I thought I put a significant amount of work into addressing your OP very well, and re-reading over it, I don’t see a single point where I talked about guns, only about how guns are discussed on the board, and suggestions on how to improve that.

But, you do you.

31

I think he rejected your binary, and had other suggestions relating to how we could better debate guns on this board.

I also think his post is worth reading to inform discussion regarding moderation of gun threads.

32

Okay but is the standard then that just because people choose to use the flag system we should treat a topic that is not really dissimilar from many other topics, in a special way? Maybe there should just be consequences for repeated use of the flag system when the flagged post clearly is not a moddable action.

I guess for me at the end of the day–I mostly like to see a message board have as many discussions as possible within the remit of that board (and this board is basically a broad spectrum general topic board), I support the concept of not letting really hateful topics be discussed because there’s a flipside of open discussion where you end up like 4chan/8chan/Stormfront etc which isn’t what almost anyone wants.

I doubt I will participate in any future gun threads unless the topic is very interestingly crafted–which is my norm, in the 2000s and such I used to debate guns on here a ton, but I’ve largely decided these threads aren’t worth participating in for many years. But I wouldn’t want my personal disinterest in them to mean people who are interested in hashing it out lose that privilege. And along those lines I thought @puzzlegal’s point was a salient one–just because I’ve mostly said all I have to say on this topic, shouldn’t mean the topic is closed for any future members or current members who have not done so.

I’m already somewhat investing a lot of typing into a topic I’m not super invested in, but my high-level philosophy on things like this would be:

  1. Is a gun thread a genuine debate or premise for debate?
  2. Is it distinct from other gun debates within a reasonably recent timeframe?
  3. Have the posters in the thread avoided devolving into deliberate trolling, rules violations (i.e. personal attacks etc)?

If those three things are met, I don’t personally see a problem with it being in GD.

What I could maybe see being a good idea is saying if a post is just a complaint about guns, it should just be a post in the already extant complain about gun omnibus thread in the Pit (Stupid Gun news of the day (Part 2) - #211 by Mundane_Super_Hero), I would argue Velocity’s thread that kicked all this off would actually fall pretty obviously in that category–taking his OP in a textually strict way, I don’t think it was really a vehicle for debate, just a vehicle for being angry and upset about mass shootings–and we basically already have a place for things like that, a one sided thread that anti-gun people post anti-gun things in, and largely avoid spamming the rest of the forum with it.

33

The problem is that a lot of posts in gun threads ARE hijacks, and should be reported. The gun threads are very prone to being hijacked.

34

I agree that it was poorly suited for GD, because there isn’t any firm evidence to back up the hypothetical situation. However, I don’t think it was polling because I didn’t see in the OP where they asked the gun owners of the SDMB how many shootings would alter their stance. Then it would be polling.

Which isn’t to say that that isn’t a valid question to ask. Good luck getting people to actually answer it, though. I’ve tried a similar tactic in a thread about electoral math which allows someone who was 2% or so away from a plurality to win the Presidency, and wondered how large a difference would seem unfair, and no one who was in that very thread strongly defending the outsized voting power of small and purple states would pony up an actual number. And I actually did, myself: while I wouldn’t turn away a Presidency that my candidate won 40%-60%, the victory would nonetheless feel tainted.

It’s logical that there is some point at which the level of mass shootings where people would admit the need for stronger gun control, but I doubt that anyone would give a firm number if the question were asked. A few people might admit that there would not be any such number that would change their minds, but more likely they would just decline to give a number and choose to just generically defend gun rights instead.

35

I don’t agree that the thread wasn’t narrowly tailored. The big issue is that I think it has a pretty quick answer that all sides can agree on. Based on the arguments from those against gun control, it does not seem like there is a number of mass shootings that would change their mind.

Once you’ve said that, there’s little more to say, so it makes perfect sense that the thread would broaden into a gun debate. The second you start discussing if the above is a good thing or a bad thing or what motivates such reasoning, you quickly get to a regular gun debate.

I am not sure if I would consider the broader debate a “tired topic”: one that (1) causes a lot of moderation issues and (2) has been discussed a bunch with no headway being made. But if it does so qualify, I wouldn’t concern myself with it being unwelcoming to newbies, as the whole point of that declaration would be that we don’t want to welcome that debate.

As for @k9bfriender’s post: I agree it isn’t actually debating the topics it presents, but I do think going into that many examples gets into the weeds a bit too much. I don’t think we’ll ever have a specific list of proscribed topics. So if you want to propose Topic X is a good gun topic and Topic Y is a bad one, then I’d suggest coming up with specific criteria for such, rather than just examples.

36

What’s a lot of flags? I thought we were told that there are only a few flags a day, less than 10 for the entire board. Does opening a gun thread double the amount of flags? The Baldwin thread thing baffles me. I think I read that thread from the beginning and I can’t recall any arguments, tho it’s been stretched out over several weeks.

That being said, I don’t read gun threads precisely because they eventually end up all the same. Two groups of people talking across each other, neither paying attention to what the other says. Same old, same old.

I like the idea of specific topic threads, but I suspect that will take a lot of modding. Move everything else into one giant gun thread in the Pit and let people do whatever they want there, short of hate speech etc.

37

Actually, gun threads probably do double the number of flags and that includes the spam flags.

FTR: I think something important came out in a shooting thread when the gun part of the debate was left out.

Plenty of us didn’t realize the Police aren’t actually required to protect the public. Keeping the guns & politics has made for a really informative thread that did cover new ground.

38

Wow, that is a lot. Thanks for coming up with this idea, it’s really helped keep the Uvalde shooting thread on track.

I actually did know that, but you are right, it’s not a well known fact. The more people that have that kind of information the better.

39

Guns aren’t a narrowly defined subject. This approach of narrow focus forces the debate into the same tired arguments, virtually standardized, and part of the problem itself. If you only want an orderly rhetorical exercise then sure, go ahead and limit all the arguments for your convenience. But if we’re going to debate the entire subject then we have to be free to address all aspects of it.

40

I think if there’s anything the ongoing pit thread has proved, it’s that there’s a number of people (and it’s not on the pro-side of the discussion) who are utterly incapable of articulating their points without resorting to vile insults and abuse, and also don’t understand the subject because they’ll just keep shifting the goalposts, with a side-order of abuse because they hate anyone who likes shooting.

I mean, I think it’s well established that I’m not some rabid 2A supporter and would probably be considered some kind of liberal gun hater by supporters of same, simply because I support the idea of firearms licensing and requiring people to keep their guns stored securely and also not give them to unlicensed/prohibited people.

For that stance, the anti-gun people here on the boards have called me, among other things, a child murderer, a “weird little fetishist”, a weirdo, and a pig-fucker - and that’s not including the general “common” abuse that gets thrown around in the Pit all the time anyway.

If that’s how posters on the anti-side feel, and the mods have no inclination to step in and say “Even for the pit, that’s enough, dial it back”, then what possible hope is there for a rational discussion elsewhere on the boards when the anti-gun side is demonstrably incapable of arguing in good faith?