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> Please weigh your own personal hobby against our society's clear dysfunction when it comes to gun violence. Does the pleasure you get from learning about "reloading ammo for 100+ year old rifles" does not outweigh my desire for my son to not be shot at school?

You're presenting a false dichotomy. I have seen no proven link between YouTube videos showing proper gun handling and gun violence. I say this as someone who hates guns, but most of the points you raise are not logically sound.

especially the 100year old rifle. Noone is going to shoot up a school with a karabiner

I have a very strong suspicion that the videos which lead to violence don't have to show any guns; it's more the conspiracy-theory and highly polarising right-wing politics stuff that leads to school shootings.

The blog of the Austin bomber is a good example of all the "red flags".

The parent did not complain about the ban being ineffective. He complained about it hurting his niche hobby. That's selfish.

As for the argument that the ban is a bad idea because it is ineffective. I don't know if the ban will help. I'm not an expert, though it seems pretty obvious that our current situation isn't working so well. Do you think a ban will increase gun violence? How sure are you?

It's only selfish if the ban actually achieves some important social objective. But it doesn't, not really. You don't need any of that content to buy a gun and shoot up a school.

I have seen no proven link between YouTube videos showing proper gun handling and gun violence.

The suggestion that Youtube should wait until there's proof that videos they host cause harm is nonsense. A private corporation needs to be cautious otherwise they're opening themselves up to unnecessary risk from being sued by a plaintiff who manages to demonstrate harm (within the limits of a single specific case). YouTube doesn't have a moral duty to uphold freedom. They have a duty to protect their shareholders value.

The government shouldn't ban things until there's proof that the thing is harmful to society (and even then there's a good argument that they shouldn't), but that's got nothing to do with what's happening here.

You should be deeply concerned that any topic could be banned without much oversight, as a lot of the banned subs were never informed ahead of time, and were never given an opportunity to comply with the new rules. I think stuff like this is easy to turn into a slippery slope. If we ban firearms outright, should we also ban the simulation of firearm usage? If so, you could go ahead and ban /r/gaming. What about movies with gun violence? Where is the line here, and where is it moving?

This is why I honestly think this move is not really about protecting a community, I think it's about image for advertisers. Facebook is getting reamed for it's lack of data control, so lets ban some hot topics and make it look attractive for advertisers looking for somewhere else to go.

> Please weigh your own personal hobby against our society's clear dysfunction when it comes to gun violence.

What do you think about prohibiting drugs and alcohol? Like another commenter was a victim of gun violence in his family, I'm a victim of alcohol abuse in mine. Yet, many people enjoy these substances recreationally without problem.

It's hard to weigh a purely "for fun" activity against something with dire consequences. It feels selfish to say, "my hobby is more important than your life" but that's ultimately what the 21st amendment repealing Prohibition said. And it's not an entirely unfair argument when the people safely enjoying the activity are in the tens or hundreds of millions, and the ones harmed by it are a tiny fraction.

I like guns. I don't love them. But it's a fun activity like darts, but with "cooler" machines. I could be persuaded that my hobby is net-negative for society, but it's hard to give up a clearly safe, fun, activity because of an abstract notion that somewhere else in this country of 100s of millions of people, someone is using it for evil, especially when it's fairly rare.

And liberals aren't totally blameless when it comes to the "coolness" factor of guns, either, if you look at essentially any modern movie or TV show, in which they're fairly well glorified. If the solution is to make people not want to have this hobby - and I think that's probably best bang-for-your-buck (heh) solution - then maybe Hollywood should self-censor like YouTube here and not have guns in their movies (or blur them out like in Korean dramas).

For me the difference is that drugs and alcohol usually predominately affect the user. This obviously isn't always the case...

Guns aren't toys. Yes, they can be used for hunting or just shooting stuff, and most guns aren't especially more effective at killing people than a variety of other household items, but assault rifles were actually designed to kill people, to assault entrenched positions (the stg-44 in WW2). It's not made for hunting or anything else, it's made to kill people.

The consumer ar-15 is just a variant of the m-16. With a bump stock it becomes fully automatic, easily getting around any laws. I posted this in another comment, but the Vegas shooter had 14 of those modded up. 14! Why does anyone need one of those killing machines for fun, much less 14? It's easy to see how he killed fifty people in a crowd.

I don't understand the justification for that. When your ability to have fun with a "toy" which is actually a killing machine makes it easy for dozens of people to get murdered while they are out having a good time, it's an issue. Seems like a warped sense of priorities. Yet you'll find people (many here) who believe that even limiting them to one (or god forbid anyone even suggest it) is some kind of assault on their liberties. That's not reasonable. The Bill of Rights wasn't written with anything beyond the notion of hunting rifles and muskets. It doesn't say "all citizens should have the right to fire 90 rounds per 10 seconds to defend themselves or have a good time".

Should attacks like that continue to occur, it's going to be that complete lack of moderation by gun users themselves which is going to get their rights taken away. I don't say that as wanting that to happen, but it seems obvious.

> I really hope that as a society we can find some way to back away from extremism.

That would include backing away from extreme censorism. Banning everything that could potentially lead to your child's death would result in banning... everything!

You can probably make this argument for car/bike racing and tuning, fast food or a number of hobbies and "correlated" deaths. Luckily this restriction seems to be about weird stuff like bump stocks.

And as for the "Blumph!" comment, we still have yet to see Syria driven to the state of Libya so that's at least quite a few kids saved from getting shot right there.

Mass shootings are a drop in the bucket in terms of gun deaths, vast majority are either suicides or inner city gang violence. Majority of homicides are committed with handguns rather than assault rifles. If you account for demographics the US has lower gun violence than many European countries.

Personally I think it's funny how the left and right are so illogical on their chosen issues. When the right doesn't want to take refugees they stoke fears about Islamic terrorism. When the left wants gun control they stoke fear about mass shootings, despite the relative rarity of both.

Both sides of the aisle prefer emotional manipulation to actual facts when it suites them.

I actually had this discussion with someone who is very pro-gun earlier. To me the reasonable position is it's absurd when people can buy weapons made to kill (the AR-15, for example) for funzies. The Parkland shooter was 19, clearly off his rocker, and had multiple semi auto rifles. If you listen to the shooting, you're talking weapons that can fire killing/maiming shots every second. These are essentially the same assault weapons (trivially modified) that were designed by the Germans in WW2 to assault positions. They aren't toys. The only reason they aren't full on assault rifles is because of law, but that didn't stop the NRA from crying like the Constitution was getting pissed on.

That you can't ask "why does someone need to own 3 semi auto rifles?" without the NRA freaking out or unwilling to even discuss it over some absurd slippery slope like "if the government tries to attack its own people and they are dying in the streets, we need our weapons" is absurd. That doesn't give me any comfort. How about you not let your country turn into a hellhole and then you don't need that. But right now people are dying, why do people need those guns again?

Anyway, while I'm inclined to agree with what you are saying, you also gotta be realistic in that nobody is shooting up schools with 100 year old weapons and people discussing that isn't the same thing. That's an extreme position. Practice what you preach.

I can't tell who I pissed off, but based on you getting downvoted as well, I'm guessing it's the pro gun people. You're right, you can't discuss this reasonably... It's behavior like that which makes it hard to give the pro gun people the benefit of the doubt. People are more important than guns, that should be obvious.

My family is a victim of gun violence. You never get the victims back.

We are still not addressing root issues - mental health and inaction of law enforcement on credible tips.

Taking guns away helps reduce damage, but those intent on doing harm will still find ways to take at least one life (or at least attempt to). One too many for my taste.

I really wish we could get people help before we have to worry about them picking up weapons of any kind. Probably wishful thinking.

I don't see why we can't do both. Mental healthcare is one of the main needs in this country, but the Las Vegas shooter was also not classically mentally ill, just nihilistic and evil. He also had 23 guns, some of them full on assault, some of them modified.

That's absurd. Why does it always have to be a dichotomy? Surely a nation of 300 million people can address multiple issues at once? All we've got going on is people doing this tribal bullshit while we kill each other.

"full on assault"

Which means? Too many bullets? Wrong color? Too accurate? Too easy to use? It's a meaningless term unless you interpret as a positive attribute.

You're right.

What's important is he had 24* weapons, 14 of which were AR-15s with bump stocks which allowed them to fire at 9 rounds per sec (easily Googleable).

So not technically assault rifles but practically he had 14 assault rifles. Which is crazy. How can you even purchase that many?

Do those who resist gun control believe arsenals like that are reasonable? This question is in good faith. I just don't understand it.

He can only shoot one gun at once. It's (much) faster to change a mag than to switch guns. Think harder about why he may have had so many. Maybe look into his very unusual non-history and the people around him.

If it's not obvious, officially what happened in Vegas is a coverup.

Do you frequent conspiracy forums, because thats where I've heard that?

The most hilarious scenario is the suggestion that he was actually doing an arms deal with bad guys who were planning on assassinating some Saudi nearby. The arms deal went wrong so they murdered him and to cover that up they shot up a crowd. Which you know, makes more sense than walking away or buying your guns in the desert anywhere within 100 miles around there.

The easier thing to believe is the guy loved guns and decided to kill people. You can't keep up that rate of fire no matter how many mags you've got, that's why he had multiple weapons.

I'd love to hear an explanation that isn't crazy and actually has some evidence behind it, but otherwise Hanlon's Razor and all...

ah, ya, "conspiracy forums" with a "crazy" tossed in. Welp, no point in discussing it then. Case closed. "Hilarious" even... Clearly he needed all those guns for...

"You can't keep up that rate of fire no matter how many mags you've got"

Citation needed. You could make shot timeline with the audio. It's 101 that changing mags is faster than switching guns. I have most if not all of the footage, there is nothing there that makes me suspect he needs more than one gun, I have extensive experience shooting similar weapons.

Did anything remotely interesting happen in SA soon after?

Just saying, the only place the cover up story goes around is conspiracy forums.

If you've got a non-crazy story (didn't call you crazy, you didn't provide anything but a vague suggestion), have at it.

Since you are the authority on what is "crazy" and seem to think someone needs more than one gun to fire that many rounds, there is no way I can have a real discussion, it's "crazy" by def.

Did anything remotely interesting happen in SA soon after?

Yes they are reasonable. I have more than 24 guns, most of which are so called “assault weapons”. You are not taking them.

Maybe I misread the parent. It sounded like parent was very "dismayed" at youtube's effort to ban videos about exactly the kind of horrifying weapons you mention, just because the ban also happens to impact his hobby with 100yo rifles. To me, banning some videos isn't extreme, even if it does have some overreach in some cases. It's just an oversight that could be fixed.

Can't we all agree to get the extreme videos off youtube, before we worry about some corner cases with niche communities? Because if some random guy's fascination with 100yo rifles means kids in my son's classmates are more likely to shoot the place up, then screw that.

I was trying to specifically call out the parent's reaction. Not "youtube is part of the problem and yes we should do something about and yes banning most of this stuff is reasonable but but maybe youtube could carve out some careful exemptions for my harmless hobby". It seemed dismayed at even the concept of any limitations whatsoever.

> Can't we all agree to get the extreme videos off youtube, before we worry about some corner cases with niche communities? Because if some random guy's fascination with 100yo rifles means kids in my son's classmates are more likely to shoot the place up, then screw that.

We can't. Because some guy posting videos about historical weapons doesn't mean that has anything to do with your kid being safe.

> Because if some random guy's fascination with 100yo rifles means kids in my son's classmates are more likely to shoot the place up, then screw that.

Do you support banning violent movies and video games?

I mean I love gta but I couldn't in good faith make the argument that it's less harmful than videos on making ammo for 100 year old rifles.

> and yes banning most of this stuff is reasonable

Why is it reasonable? Show me the clear evidence that banning this kind of content leads to less violence.

It's a complex topic (obviously). I won't attempt to figure out what they were saying, but some of the issue (and maybe annoyance) is that companies like Google and Reddit are spineless. They'll host stuff all day when it makes them money, but as soon as there is public outcry, they get scared and you can tell where their bread is buttered. There's no real principle there (whether it be free speech or some liberal values), it's just cynical money grabbing as long as they can get away with it.

It's not like this stuff is new. These same attacks have been going on for decades, only now does Google decide they've had enough. It's the reversal of position which is strange. Reddit's had videos of people getting chopped up and flayed for years now, it's only now they're cutting down on it. That seems strangely connected to them getting $200 million in funding and chasing after Facebook's tail. Maybe that's not strange, just obvious.

I'm ranting a bit, but the problem is how top down these decisions are. These companies build up communities then pull the rug out from under them. Either support that stuff or don't, but this wishy washy nonsense where they only react is lame. What do these companies really beleive in? $.

Excellent points and a shame you’re being downvotes.