Guns is a known toxic subject. There is a massive history of anti-hunting vs pro-NRA antipathy. And, IMO, including the subject here will inevitably invite that negativity and angst into the forum.
Comparing it to MQA was funny except AFAIK no-one died of MQA (yet). Maybe someone did get so worked up about it that did get sick
The question is whether such a topic enhances or diminishes the forum overall. Sure coffee, dogs and bikes are topics but unlikely to cause stress.
Personally I wouldn’t open this can o’worms. But, I have no dog in this knife fight as I don’t read the OT forums area.
I thought you were making a joke with your comment about the US, where gun violence occurs at a greater rate than in your own country. I was pointing out that your own country celebrates firearms for non-violent uses.
Agreed on the touchy subject. I’d like to moderate the offending content and not the touchiness.
The mute button exists for exactly your situation.
No, not a joke. I was comparing the situation in the US with the 5 monkeys’ experiment that you mentioned, i.e. that people in the US grow up in a culture that celebrates guns, hence people from elsewhere often see the topic as way more objectionable and worrying because they don’t share that celebratory culture. You’re right though, there is a big difference between the US and the UK, which probably has something to do with the fact that we don’t celebrate guns.
This is exactly my point. You are taking firearms and shooting to mean “killing and/or hurting living things”.
I’m 100% sure the original author and any meaningful contributors to this topic would not take it the same way.
Firearms describe the device, not its use as a weapon. Shooting is an action of discharging the firearm and does not solely imply that it is directed towards living things.
A very common use case of owning and shooting firearms is in the sport of it, and I’m not ready to censor based on the fact that there happens to be a bad use case.
You know, all this talk reminds me about how people tried to censor heavy metal music because it was feared it would bring about mass violence. Yes, violence did occur, but I’m glad the censors failed.
Y’all best start discussing, because there’s already one user that’s announced leaving the forum on day 35, and it could start a stampede of right-thinking folks to exit this den of iniquity
Well, this is one subject I just can’t ignore once I’ve seen it, especially when I see it on the last forum in the universe I expected to see it on. I live in the US and I just can’t be impartial to the gun violence epidemic and anything related to it. It’s not a natural phenomenon we have to deal with, it’s one of the choices we make. I think the choice you made today was a bad one. I won’t be looking at Roon with the same admiration, to say the least. It may be the perfect solution to my love for music, but at the end of the day, nothing is irreplaceable.
(I don’t know why you have a topic called “off topic”, which is a contradiction in terms, but when you do, sooner or later this is bound to happen.)
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Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
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Good to see you folks haven’t accidentally regained your sense of proportion in the weeks i’ve been preoccupied with other things!
If this is the knife thread, let me second Danny’s praise for a constant companion. I keep a Swiss Army knife, a Victorinox “Manager” model, on my key chain and in my pocket at all times. Hard to imagine the sheer number of threads it’s cut, splinters it’s removed, papers it’s signed (it has a ballpoint pen), screws it’s tightened, and even pencils it’s sharpened, over the years.
Practicality aside, the knife is one of the premier applications of the wedge, itself one of the six classic “simple machines”, and deserves to be celebrated for the number of lives it has saved from starvation and predation!
We don’t have a topic called “off-topic”. We have a category called “off topic”, for topics that people want to discuss because they value the community of people here and their opinions, beyond the obvious subjects of Roon, music, and audio gear.
I will not call for blocking or censorship on any post. Which I’m sure Jamie will confirm for clarification.
Tolerance and discussion is important. Myself, I fall into the faction of much freedom of speech, tolerance, but fewer guns and I want more restrictive gun laws.
Off Topic there was a request to talk about firearms. Collecting, shooting and modifying short and long guns should be in the exploration of the forum.
In fact, so far, considerate of firearms owners and those who want to be, there is not very broad or productive discussion of what firearms are already owned or of interest for further exploration.
To include in the argument also the pocket knife or tools for the preparation of food in the kitchen, I think as an example is mistaken.
this came up because a moderator claimed that being “a knife guy” was “even worse” than the firearm topic.
You may think that guns may be touchy while knives should not be, but he thinks that knives are even worse.
What should be clear to all is that people think about different things differently. The question should be about tolerance or intolerance.
That gun thread has a handful of posts already, and it’s gotten highly technical and detailed. I would expect nothing less from the users of this community.
You never know what is going to set someone off. Sometimes even the most innocuous things. Someone took offence some months ago because of an in-thread off-topic exchange of half a dozen posts between members about cars. It wasn’t even the off-topic nature that offended, it was that someone felt it inappropriate to mention enjoyment of cars during a pandemic when some people are struggling to make ends meet. Go figure.
