A brief and tentative analysis of the state of the group.

[Atypical Liberal]

8. Let the juries handle it.

Juries is the way the owners of this web site have decided to handle the majority of alerted posts. Almost certainly this was done to automate the moderation process and offload the workload from moderators and to eliminate personality problems from driving the conversation.

Let the people decide. It doesn't get much more Democratic than that. What you are asking for is, quite literally, a dictator to dictate how the forum will be used. If people are apathetic, then Democracy will suffer, but that is still better than a dictator(s).

This is Democratic Underground. Side with democracy!

The forbiddance of "Google dumps" of two varieties:

V1: "Gunman kills everyone"
V2: "Gunman saves everyone"

These types of Google Dumps are deposited, so to speak, with one purpose and one purpose alone: To show why the other side is wrong through anecdotal evidence. Barring a tragedy on the scale of Aurora or Columbine (Which are current events that may lead to policy change regarding the Second Amendment), these Dumps do little more than provide an outlet for one side or the other to simply say "I told you so.

The problem here is that anecdotes work for the pro-gun side, but do not work for the anti-gun side.

Why?

Virtually no one advocates that everyone should be armed or that guns are a guaranteed ticket to success in self-defense or defense against tyranny.

But anti-gun advocates frequently advocate that all guns are useless and do not belong in the hands of civilians at all.

All it takes is one single anecdote to disprove the anti-gun theory.

For example, on this forum we have heard it said that no one could ever use a gun successfully in self-defense against a criminal who surprises their victim. Yet in fact examples have been provided that show that in fact this does happen. We've been told that guns are just penis substitutes by people who just dream about killing someone. A single example of a world-renown female Olympic shooter puts that theory down also.

The bottom line is, anti-gun people post anecdotes to try and prove a trend, which they cannot. Pro-gun people post anecdotes to disprove incorrect theories, which they absolutely can.