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Tobacco is the analogy, you don't want to see people smoking on TV and in films but you would not want a documentary on the history of film to be banned just because some of the actors in it are smoking.

Regarding main story, I used to work in broadcasting and it was clear from the oscilloscopes when some porn was on air or on a tape. This was not an exact science, but experienced engineers knew what the 'scope was telling them. This was a long time ago and I am sure Google would have machine learned porn a long time ago. No evidence for that but I doubt it is a recent innovation.

Therefore this enabling of the feature that enforces the Terms of Service is probably due to changes up ahead in the legal landscape and not because Google suddenly decided they wanted clean servers.

Could you elaborate on "clear from the oscilloscopes"? That sounds interesting.

> But the pro-gun lobby in the US are bringing all of this on themselves.

I wrote a much longer reply but decided that arguing this topic here is probably not appropriate. Suffice it to say that the notion that the "pro-gun lobby" is in any way opposed to safe ownership of guns or supports mass shootings or other criminal gun violence is absurd.

One of the most vocal pro-gun owners on HN would repeatedly make posts supporting mass murder whenever the topic of laws to reduce murder by gun were discussed. He'd say that gun owners would kill many people if guns were made illegal.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11604135

> And let's be clear, in this putative Civil War 2.0, we're threatening to kill gun-grabbers wholesale and retail, with guns being one of the least effective means when compared to tactics like killing Blue cities. People kill other people, guns are inanimate objects.

There are like 15 posts very similar to this, although some are flagged.

'hga was also the poster who was banned for (too late, IMO) telling a Jewish person to "self-deport" because he didn't want them--you know, (((them)))--in his country.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13056816

He offered elsewhere a clearly reasonable return to the "pre-1965 demographics of the US." And so very positively spoke of "moving past the concept of equality before the law."

And he isn't alone.

There are some real scary correlations between the gun-fetishists--and I say that having grown up around firearms; I am not scared of them any more than I am scared of any other recklessly used tool with a toxic culture surrounding them--and generally toxic and antisocial worldviews. But the causation is not the guns, to be clear; the machismo-driven culture that leads to the guns is the cause.

Except when sensible restrictions on gun buying are propsed, that same lobby loses their mind and immediately opposes it. The NRA is no longer a sporting association, they are a far-right political lobby and are finally being recognized as such. They can change this and get back to their original mission, or continue their current collision course with the rest of America who want sensible gun policy.

> Except when sensible restrictions on gun buying are propsed

Because every "compromise" gets turned into something else to be attacked. That "Gun show loophole" was an explicit concession, that is something offered in compromise, is now being turned into something to be attacked and revoked.

There is no "compromise" - the goal is ban and confiscation. We've seen it time and time again. How many times must one put their hand on the iron before they realize it burns?

> There is no "compromise" - the goal is ban and confiscation. We've seen it time and time again.

What makes you say this? Even in heavy gun control countries, some forms of shooting (e.g. pest control, hunting, target) and gun ownership are still generally legal.

Exactly what gets made legal and illegal is precisely what is being debated, but I'd be incredibly surprised if you ended up with total ban and confiscation. I think a compromise is exactly what everyone wants.

> but I'd be incredibly surprised if you ended up with total ban and confiscation.

Haven't some heavy gun control regimes in the US ended up as de-facto total bans? IIRC, one city "allowed" legal gun ownership (or maybe just legal handgun ownership), but it required police approval, which was almost never granted.

You've mostly described NYC's approach to concealed carry permits. But it's quite possible for a NYC resident to get permission to legally own a gun, use it at a shooting range, hunt with it, and have it available at home for self defense.

Also California - while some rural counties are effectively "shall issue" the most populous counties are "may issue."

The unfortunate reality is that there is a complete cultural disconnect where many people genuinely cannot fathom that guns have some legitimate purposes and have in their minds that a near total gun ban is a reasonable idea. Then you have the less extreme group that wants to ban all guns and gun accessories that aren't purely utilitarian. These tend to be the same kinds of folks that support bans on fireworks. The anti-gun side are far too eager to hold up extreme examples like Australia, Japan, and the UK as their ideal, rather than more moderate countries like Germany or New Zealand. There is no evidence to support that the highly restrictive gun control policies of the former countries make them any more safe than the moderately restrictive policies of the latter countries.

Here's the issue with the NRA stance from my personal angle.

Personally, I do not agree with "ban and confiscation". At most, I think that items designed to circumvent existing law (eg bump stocks, which essentially exist to in effect circumvent fully automatic gun regulations) should be illegal. I'd also like to see the case for and against a few other things (eg large magazine clips) but overall AR-15s and other boogeymen are fine to me. Elsewise, my belief is that most of the focus should be on limited tightening access (gun violence restraining orders for instance), much of it within our existing system, and not much more. Basically, I think that the mass shooting phenomenon people are reacting to could be quite tempered with slight tweaks, not wholesale confiscation.

But: I am culturally more on the moderate left side. The NRA's rhetoric these days, and even more so of too many of its supporters, is full of often conspiracy tinged liberal caricature and conspiracy. I honestly don't feel like defending the NRA position these days, because not only is it too rigid, it is identity oriented. And on identity, many of them by default, in their posts, already think I'm a piece of shit who wants to take their guns anyways. Why bother speaking up against the lefties that actually do want to confiscate?

Guns have essentially become a part of right-wing identity politics. A position that might be fatal for their full cause. (Though judging from current youthful view (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/12/are-mille...) more in terms of restrictions on access instead of restrictions on equipment.).

>There is no "compromise" - the goal is ban and confiscation.

The goal is effective gun safety laws. If you had those, nobody would be talking about bans or confiscations and this issue would simply not exist. If the only two choices the American public faces is hundreds of dead children per year or blanket bans. Who can blame them for choosing the latter? So come on gun lobby. Provide an alternative. This is your problem to fix.

Folks are running around wanting to ban the AR-15 because of a few black swan events featured that particular platform. Guess what, knives kill more people annually in the US than all rifles do. Handguns kill many times more people than that. No one is clambering to ban the handgun.

In the case of the Parkland shooter that sparked this latest round of protest, the murderer had something like 30+ police visits in a year including one in which he attempted to drink gasoline to commit suicide[0]. My ex-girlfriend, after attempting suicide with a kitchen knife, was committed for evaluation and subsequently barred from owning any firearms after a single incident.

Florida, and the United States as a whole already have laws on the books for this exact type of situation but the LEOs failed to act, and as a result 17 teenagers needlessly lost their lives. How about, before attempting to ban something, we enforce the good laws we have on the books? Banning the AR-15 would not have prevented this shooting. Enforcing our existing laws would have.

[0] - https://qz.com/1214418/the-fbi-broward-county-sheriffs-offic...

I think banning handguns is absolutely on the table. Most gun deaths are from handguns, four times as many as from knives. The Dunblane massacre of 16 children and one teacher in the UK was carried out with handguns. The objective is not to ban this gun or that gun, it's to protect the public. Banning guns is simply a means to that end. If the gun lobby can come up with a better alternative _that_works_ I don't think anyone would have a problem with that. Banning guns will work.

> Except when sensible restrictions on gun buying are propsed [sic], that same lobby loses their mind and immediately opposes it.

My understanding is that they don't think the sensible restrictions will stay sensible, but rather they'll be stepping stones to heavy restrictions or outright bans. That's not an unreasonable attitude given that ultimate goal of gun control advocates tend towards the latter.

You know what the best way is to make sure that happens? Equate the two for so long that when the gun control lobby eventually wins people fail to give credit to your arguments. My personal opinion -- the current constitutional regime is a historical oddity and unlikely to persist.

Unrestricted access to purchase battlefield weapons like the AR-15, lack of centralized records of gun owner permits, prohibitions on digitizing gun ownership records for criminal investigations, and disallowing research into understanding outbreaks in gun violence are all morally indefensible policies. I don't trust an organization who conflates defense of those policies with fighting mass gun confiscation.

"battlefield weapons like the AR-15"

The AR-15 is only popular among enthusiasts because it is basically a Lego set of the firearm world. Historically every style of weapon that gun owners have has been used extensively on the battlefield. If the AR-15 is banned then another rifle/pistol building platform will be popularized and replace it. Attempting to ban a weapon on certain visual features or other features that do not affect its firing operation are meaningless.

If the sensible restrictions worked, nobody would be talking about heavy restrictions or bans. Wanting to solve the massive gun violence problem in America is not unreasonable.

> If the sensible restrictions worked, nobody would be talking about heavy restrictions or bans.

I'm not so sure, since it really depends on how you define success. I'd wager strict gun control advocates would define it as something fairly extreme, like "an end to gun violence," which could only be achieved by extreme, not "sensible," restrictions.

> Wanting to solve the massive gun violence problem in America is not unreasonable.

True, but unfortunately we're also suffering from an extreme lack of trust. You're not going to see compromises unless that trust is rebuilt from both sides. Until then, the best you're going to get is opportunistic exploitation of temporary situational strength.

I’m a foreigner, ignore me at will, but personally I’d want to make a deal. You’re never going to eliminate all gun deaths, criminals will always find ways to get guns, so let’s set an achievable goal.

5 years to halve gun deaths in America, or all automatic and semi automatic weapons get banned. You can set whatever laws you like, it’s your problem, you fix it. If you think it’s a mental health issue, fine, you get whatever funding you need to address it.

That would still be 50% more gun deaths per capita than the European countries with the loosest gun controls and highest levels of gun ownership. It’s 2.5x Israel and is higher than Nicaragua.

I am in no way suggesting that the NRA, or gun owners in general support mass shootings. I am saying that if they want to keep their guns, the responsibility fall on them to come up with a regulatory regime that actually works to prevent such things happening with such appalling regularity.

If the gun lobby comes up with effective regulations that preserve their interests and that also work, this problem wouldn't exist. This is their problem to fix.

I don't know what the NRA is doing but it looks like it is working. Here is a graph showing a long term decline in gun deaths in America.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c6/Gu...

Forgotten Weapons is in a good position where he has enough viewers, and enough Patreon supporters, that he could move to another platform (or host his own) and would probably survive.

The sad thing is that it will stop other, new creators from being discovered.

It will probably also kill the growth of the channel. I got into Forgotten Weapons and InRange TV last year, but if they hadn't been on Youtube I'd probably never have found them. It's a terrible shame, they make great, highly informative content.