Where can I discuss politics and gun legislation issues?

[Badger]

Why have a separate Social Groups area?

Over the last 10 years, we’ve received many requests to permit broader public discussions amongst members, involving topics such as politics and firearms regulations/legislation in various countries. For just as long, we constantly reminded everybody to re-read our Forum Rules & Site User Agreement (click here)., which they agreed to when they joined our site.

Particularly this section…..

This site is designed to encourage the open exchange of information among the general military surplus collector community, thereby helping all of our members to better enjoy their chosen hobby. It's not a venue for discussing the politics of firearms ownership or the practices and policies of various governments attempting to control control them.

The reason was simple. Those discussions always lead to bitter disagreements and acrimony, even among friends. To validate this, all you have to do is see the vitriol spewed at and about people on many other Internet forums, that permit open discussions involving politics, religion, ethnic groups or gun legislation practices.

Conversely on our site, we’ve always only encouraged public interactions with a lot of like minded folks, who share a common love of old milsurps and the terrific collecting hobby surrounding them. Most of our 35,000+ registered members want to come here to talk only about Enfields, Mausers, M1 Carbines, 1903 Springfields, or whatever genre of collectible firearm they love to converse about. They don’t really want to read a lot of controversial subject matter other than that, plus, we really don't want to see a lot of good "electronic" friends who may differ in political or religious views, destroy an otherwise enjoyable post reading experience talking about old guns, by deliberately creating a posting environment which by its nature promotes divisiveness.

Having said that, we’ve often wondered if we could create a separate area away from our standard public forums, where some members who wanted to discuss topical material involving politics and gun control legislation practices, could gather to vent and express their views without polluting the public forums with threads that distracted from our primary site theme. So, we asked our software developer to open up a separate area titled Social Groups (click here)

How do I access the Social Groups area?

It may be accessed from our main web site home page in various ways (see pics below).

(Click PIC to Enlarge)


(Click PIC to Enlarge)(Click PIC to Enlarge)



How do I use the Social Groups area?

The first thing you need to know is that there are three kinds of Social Groups, titled Public, Moderated and Invite Only.

One must proactively join Public and Moderated types of groups to be able to participate, with the only difference being that a Public Group does NOT require the Group Owner to accept your request to join, whereas the Private Group requires the Group Owner to electronically accept (or they may reject) your request to join. In that way, the Group Owner of a Moderated Group may control who can join and participate and who cannot. The Invite Only type of groups requires that a Group Owner proactively invite (send an electronic invitation) for you to accept, before you can join their group.

The second thing you need to know is that besides Administrators and Moderators, only Contributing Members (click here) and Advisory Panel Members (click here) are able to create NEW groups for discussions, limited to two (2) active groups each, at any given time.

All free Registered members may request to join Public, Moderated, or accept invitations from Invite Only types of groups in order to participate, but they are unable to originate any separate new groups of their own. If a free Registered member clicks on the Create Group button, they will receive a standard site error message that they are "Unauthorized" to access this function.

Finally, any moderation of behavior of member interaction is the responsibility of the Group Owner. Essentially all of these separate social groups are private, either by invitation, or you as a member originally requested to join, so if you don’t like what you’re reading, or you feel you’re being treated badly, then simply click on the Leave button for the group, so you don't have to participate any longer. (see pic below)


(Click PIC to Enlarge)

For additional information and help in creating your own Social Group for private discussions, contact the Groups Administrator via email at webmaster@milsurps.com, or PM (Private Message) at Groups Admin.

If you're unsure as to how this new Social Groups area operates and would like to just try it out, then go to our special Public Testing Group (click here) to JOIN, then practice creating and replying to discussions.

Let’s try this Social Groups area out for awhile and see how it goes. It may require some fine tuning and adjustments, but for the most part, it may satisfy a specific sub-set of our membership who may wish to take these kinds of discussions out of the main gun forums and into an area where like-minded folks may want to discuss more controversial subject matter.



Regards,
Doug

Information

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[tazaroo]

There is always AR15.com. You better have some thick skin for their general discussion area.

[henry r]

Hi. Is there a way to access the groups through mobile devices?
Thanks.

[Badger]

Hi. Is there a way to access the groups through mobile devices?
Thanks.

Other than using a standard web browser interface, no there's not.

Regards,
Doug

[Ovidio]

I appreciate this effort, but I guess I’ll stick to the main forum.
It is such a nice place!

[RC20]

A agree. I won;'t say where my feelings lie but they tend not to be with most people on gun forums.

I do love discussing guns history, details, and the rest with people who care about them as do the members here.

We may disagree about those aspects but for the most part its polite.

For the rest there is facebox and the like

[Paul S.]

Where can I discuss politics and gun legislation issues?

Um, Facebook, Twitter?


Otherwise, given this is a firearms forum, discussing gun legislation is pretty much preaching to the choir.

Once one digresses into the realm of politics, party ideology, etc. things tend to get heated and ugly. Hence the saying, 'One never discusses politics or religion in polite company.'

[Sylvano]

I don't recommend being pro-guns on Twitter. They're trigger happy when it comes to banning people who oppose the mainstream agenda on that platform. Facebook isn't much better either, now that I think about it, sadly.

[AlexRod85]

you can i find it in forums just search it up

[AlexRod85]

yeahh..i agree you better some thick skin for their general discussion area.

tazaroo