Another poster put up a thread yesterday asking about what type of gun he should get. I expected the thread to get locked. I know in the past, when Geoff ran the site, he didn't allow any talk about guns. But the thread wasn't locked... it just vanished.

I don't know what the rules are since IB took over. I checked the Rules page for DVDTalk, which says:

That's the only applicable rule I found, and the poster's thread wouldn't violate that rule. Can we get clarification? I saw another poster curious about the same thing a few days prior. If the topic is forbidden, that's fine, but the rules might need to be amended to make that clear.

We've never allowed discussions of what kind of guns to buy, recommendations on guns, etc. We try to give a little leeway on discussions of them as part of another discussion such as in the recent school shooting thread, but we've never allowed threads primarily about guns.

So you're right, we probably need to clarify that in our rules.

Thanks!

Why is it against the rules to discuss guns? It's a legal activity, unlike pirating movies. My recollection was that it was a personal preference of Geoff's. He didn't like guns, it was his site, so we didn't discuss guns. It made sense to me.

But that was then. I know that IB doesn't want to break a forum that works. But should Geoff's preferences of 2007 be frozen in place, like a fly in amber? I think that the whole existence of the rule ought to be reviewed.

The mods and admins discussed this rule after Geoff sold the site and we decided to leave it the way it was. I clarified the rule when it was requested in this thread and I don't think any further clarification is needed.