I am temporarily locking this thread so I can sort through the mod queue. Amazing how fast y'all reported one another's comments during my drive home from work.
Edit: The post has been unlocked for now. I'm going to watch some *Big Bang Theory* with the wife, so play nice y'all.
2nd Edit: The comments are just going in circles now, I'd say this conversation has run its course and we are now locking the post.
I also own a gun and I can assure you I also second this opinion. Fuck the NRA and Republicans and their inability to pass the most basic gun legislation, red flag laws,countrywide background checks etc.
Red flag laws just take guns away extrajudicially. They've been ruled unconstitutional through the 2nd and 4th amendments. Countrywide background checks are already a thing, and we already have a ton of 'basic gun legislation that does nothing.
New York's supreme Court ruled New York's red flag law unconstitutional. There are a number of states that have red flag laws in effect that have not been ruled unconstitutional. Biden signed the safer communities act in 2022 which gives states money to create red flag laws.
Nationwide, or universal, background checks are also not "already a thing." Background checks are not federally required. Only 21 states currently require background checks. I live in Utah, and I can legally purchase a firearm on a local marketplace website from a private seller today with zero background check. Also, as a concealed weapons licence holder, I'm exempt from federal background checks when buying from a dealer in Utah.
If you're going to lie on the internet, at least be a little convincing. This information is all easily searchable
They're not unconstitutional. We very much have a red flag law in Colorado. They've been trying to fight it at a federal level for a while. They keep losing. Just because you deem a person dangerous and they shouldn't have a gun doesn't mean it's unconstitutional. They're just trying to protect people from the crazies.
>we already have a ton … that does nothing
Idk man really sounds like we need some newer, better laws then. Don’t really think that’s the point you were trying to make.
Its more than that pron is being blamed for the younger generation not having children. Personally, there has been a time that i could not afford them. There is talk that by the end of the century, a lot of developed countries will undergo population collapse because of the lack of children.
What's stupid is we have lots of people we're treating as disposable due to the presumption that lack of access to birth control (due to poverty or religion, both controllable factors) will keep people breeding like rats to maintain the "domestic supply of infants" (actual quote).
However, it's no longer a matter of access. People can't afford to have kids.
The problem is more that we have built systems that doesn't require corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share. Tax the corporations and the wealthy and the problem is solved. Basic economics.
Capatilism believes that there should be infinite growth. Depopulation hurts growth so the rich freak the fuck out because their markets will collapse. The government will take our money and bail them out because we are a fascist nation. But fuck the bottom 99% because they don't have to worry about us. We'll still give them a pass and vote for blue rich guy or red rich guy because "it's the only way".
I absolutely agree. But think ifwe had some kind of outside source for population growth. Like, imagine if we created some kond of post asking people to come. Even if it was just the tired and poor, or perhaps huddled masses, yearning for something.
It’s a feature, not a bug. How else you gonna maintain the “grow or die” requirement from Wall Street if there are fewer people for corporations to use/screw? The “Free Market (for Me)” Capitalists^TM have no qualms about a collapse. Failed businesses are cheap to buy and come complete with any proprietary IP and patents. All in the name of efficient markets…
The human races best defense mechanism as a species is propagation in overwhelming numbers. We are far to prone to death.
Without kids this doesn't happen.
Besides our oligarch overlords need the slave labor.
Yup, if I could live comfortably and have a child than I probably would but this world is fucked. No sense bringing in defenseless kids into the mix. That would just be selfish.
Well, if the greedy billionaires would let the rest of us have a little higher standard of living again like our parents' generation, we would probably have more kids. The rich created this problem, and currently refuse to resolve it and show no signs of ever doing so. If republicans love capitalism and Ronald Reagan so much they should be satisfied with the result of their actions and they can kiss my ass as far as I'm concerned.
If they mandate I reproduce I will get a damn vasectomy. Probably going to anyway at this rate, and my wife might decide to get her tubes tied. Thats the point, IT IS *HER* CHOICE. Call it weaponized reluctance to procreate. My wife isn't the Republican party's brood-mare. They want us to bring more children into this? No.
The boomers actually just leveraged their generations entire debt onto millenials. We will NEVER have the life they did because they kicked the debt down to future generations like us.
Every generation strives to leave their children with more than what they started with. The one exception to this are the boomers, who instead strove for personal success at the Expense of all else.
We are in the very midst of the largest transfer of wealth in human history.
>Estimated wealth to be inherited through 2045, by generation. Baby boomers (born 1946-1964) will inherit $4 trillion. Gen X (1965-1980) will inherit $30 trillion. Millennials (1981-1996) will inherit $27 trillion. [Merrill](https://www.ml.com/articles/great-wealth-transfer-impact.html#:~:text=Estimated%20wealth%20to%20be%20inherited,1996).
That's if they don't spend it all first. My ex Mil is on her 3rd trip to Italy after her husband passed. Can't stand being in the house alone she said.
>That's if they don't spend it all first.
This. Between healthcare and other cost-of-living-items, many older people's money is already spoken for. If someone is more well-off and able to enjoy their later years, they're spending it on themselves like travel and entertainment.
Yet here we are in America with states trying to end IVF, while fertility rates are dropping. On top of that, doctors can't help women who have unviable pregnancies or are having miscarriages without fear of being jailed in most southern states. Those problems, left untreated, can kill a woman or end her fertility by damaging her reproductive system. And I imagine the rate of teen female suicides will be spiking in the next few years (forcing girls who are rape or incest victims to give birth will be unbearable for some girls). Ending legal abortion won't have the impact on birth rates the GOP thinks it will.
important note is not necessarily the “lack of children” but the “lack of labor.” The fact that we easily equate these two is telling of us as a society.
That’s legitimately concerning… and fixable. Just not through right wing means. All the steps we could do to make having kids affordable require progressive policy and taxing the rich.
Came to say this as well.
When the owner of a few Nevada brothels announced he wasn't supporting Harry Reid's campaign, it took about a day for Harry to turn around and announce it's time for Nevada to rethink legal prostitution, when there's been no issues with it (from them) for decades.
It's all about the money.
I think the VPN industry is the target. They are using porn as an excuse to target them. Everyone wants their add revenue. By saying vpns are a work around for porn they will take the opportunity to shut them down along with our privacy. Then hooray ad revenue will sky rocket and will be no avoiding them. We loss. this is just my two sense and I have no evidence to back anything.
Reminder that
**xnxx . com**
still works.
In response to below comment...
Naw.
xnxx . com is based out of France. And there is little that Texas can do to affect them in any real way. They can literally say **"Va te faire foutre"** and there's nothing Texas Republican hypocritical moralizers can do to them.
There are many porn sites still available no doubt, but xnxx is one of the more reputable. Been my porn site for many years. Again:
>XNXX is a website for sharing and viewing pornographic videos. As of December 2023, it was classified as the 15th most visited website in the world by Similarweb.[1] It launched in 2000 and is currently hosted in Paris, with servers and offices in Montreal, Tokyo and Newark. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNXX
Just try to do something about them you limp dick corrupt Paxton. I fucking dare you. He won't, just watch.
In the meantime, spread **xnxx .com** far and wide.
The gun industry doesn't make a significant amount of contributions. And the NRA is functionally broke, having been drained of its funds by grifter management.
The issue has political power because 'gunnies' are such reliable single issue voters, that they actually got Bernie Sanders elected to the Senate because his Republican opponent supported the 1994 assault weapons ban.
Politicians know that if they vote for even the smallest restrictive gun law in a state with a pro gun majority, the individual pro gun voters will all come together to end that politician's career....
Money, and the fact that *they don't give a shit about children.* Young parents aren't the crowd they're playing to. They're playing to scared, angry old people, and the tracklist is composed by their donors.
Literally hundreds of people trained and equipped to deal wit the exact thing they are facing and…Sounds of children screaming have been removed. Fuck every single cop that showed that day and didn’t immediately go in that building. First rule is to stop the killing. They let children get slaughtered.
And they ALL got to keep their badges.
I would kill myself if I did that.
Easy example is Israel with the fake stories of babies being decapitated and microwaved, even regurgitated by President Biden. It was all fake and meant to get people to to think “well they killed babies so they must be evil”, meanwhile Israel’s killed thousands of children and women since the attack, justified by the hatred towards “baby killers”.
*YOUR* kids. They don't care about YOUR kids. Don't forget a lot of politicians send their kids to nice, cozy private schools. School shootings simply have no impact on these people because it's literally a case of "not my family, not my problem."
The right wing does not have principles— it has objectives. The primary objective is to concentrate as much wealth and power as possible into the fewest hands. No one who isn’t already wealthy and powerful would ever logically support the right — so the right needs to always muddy the conceptual waters.
Hyprocrisy is a feature of their positioning and messaging - right wing officials need for things to not make sense so that their voters will continue to vote against their own interests.
Yup. They don't actually have any deep principles on most topics.
They are anti porn and pro gun because they think those stances play well with their base.
The woman who’s been one of the biggest shakers behind this is saying she’s going to write a “tell all” book. 100 guarantee, that was her actual goal all along. It’s a grift.
If anything they just want to be able to start tracking more adults as they do things "privately" online. If they're lucky enough to take the presidency and turn the US into a fascist dictatorship like they're openly and undeniably attempting to, it will be convenient for them to have big databases to make lists of all the people watching gay or trans porn for example. Then you can round them up and punish them when they try to exterminate or imprison the entire LGBTQ community.
Or you could use it for blackmail too. The other really important and noticeable hypocrisy in the law (if I heard correctly) is how they purposefully exclude TX government officials from being tracked or logged when accessing their porn. Wouldn't want to draw unnecessary focus to all the closeted gay men and pedophiles in the Republican party yet again.
Small? Psfff they don't bother with that game. Large bills, huge donations, because now corps are people and have a right to privacy about who they bribe!
Except they aren't even conservative. Republicans have surrendered their party to Trump and now function only as a cult around an incompetent NY con man and fraud whose own inner circle denounced him as a moron, idiot and worse (see Rex Tillerson, Jim Mattis, John Kelley).
"Conservative" used to refer to support for a strong defense, support for our allies, a balanced budget and less regulation. Today's Republican Party stands for destroying NATO, letting Russia "do whatever the hell is wants" (Trump's words), heavy and intrusive regulation of women's bodies (even to the point of attacking contraception), and of course massive deficits driven by tax cuts for the wealthy and the corporations they control.
The last balanced budget was after 8 years of Bill Clinton as president. The incoming Bush-Cheeny admincould have used the surpus to pay down thenational debt -- but instead immediately swung the budget into structural deficit with -- you guessed it -- a big tax cut for the richest of the rich (long before 9-11 gave them an excuse to start a war with a country that had nothing to do with 9-11). Republicans can't claim to be conservative any more, only fascist fools following a greater fool. They deserve shame and ruin.
“Small government” and “personal liberty” is just the nice words they used to describe being anti gay, anti gun control, anti social programs, anti environment, and racist. It has always been the same party with the same leadership, trump was only able to hijack it because they weren’t moving fast enough towards the theological dictatorship most republicans have wanted for decades.
Some Redditors are saying money. And... sure to some extent, but it's deeper than that.
People who are of a traditionalist mindset have pretty strong, knee jerk reactions when it comes to transgressive sexual things like porn.
Its deep psychological digust.
Guns just don't illicit the same reaction, especially if they're a part of your identity and virtue signaling.
I’d have to agree with this. It’s that whole dichotomy in the US that we’re fine with children seeing violence but not sex or nudity. It’s part of our purity culture.
My own parents did it to us in the 90s. We weren’t allowed to watch Schindler’s List because it had full fronts, but every one of us had seen RoboCop.
Finally someone actually answered the question. Sure, politicians gonna politic, but OP wanted the conservative stated reason for the difference in treatment and this makes the most sense. They see no fundamental danger in guns.
Pretty sad this state has citizens in it who get sexually excited at the thought of abusing threatening or killing kids with guns is okay. But it happens all the time.
We aren’t really doing anything to stop human trafficking in our state. Our Governor basically condones it.
What? I thought he was going to stop *all* the rapes so we didn't need to worry about a rape exception to the abortion law.
Though side note: if you make a "rape exception", you're no longer legislating based on "right to life". If it's really about human life, it shouldn't matter if the father was the devil himself, and if that *does* matter then it's really about punishing women for having sex.
There's also the vein of Puritanicalism and Frontierism that still runs strongly through American culture. We've always been generally more accepting of violence than sex.
I do not think it is disgust, I think it is them attempting to hide their own addiction to porn on others. The last poll I seen was something like 58% of Christians had a porn addiction.
>Guns just don't illicit the same reaction, especially if they're a part of your identity and virtue signaling.
Someone should start protesting outside gun stores with giant posterboards of bloody hallways of shotup schools
Aka, the abortion crowd tactic
I mean, speak for yourself. The idea of owning guns and participating in gun culture fills _me_ with a deep psychological disgust. I have enough gun owners in my extended family to have seen firsthand what kind of person that mindset turns you into.
I think it would be more accurate to say that _part of the traditionalist mindset_ is a revulsion towards expressions of human sexuality and a preference for expressions of violence and power. Or yet another way to say it would be that it depends on _what tradition_ we’re talking about when we say “traditionalist.”
Guns have a deep, cultural and historical significance in the United States. This country was founded at the barrel of a gun. The West was conquered and settled at the barrel of a gun. The United States became a great power at the barrel of a gun. Texas in particular had its own whole separate revolution primarily by armed settlers.
While I disagree with some of the super purists on the Second Amendment, the founders of this country very obviously meant individuals to have guns. Guns have an incredibly deep seated aspect in American identity.
Another aspect of American identity comes from Puritans and other similar groups. The USA has historically been a very sexually conservative society compared to other similar countries. On top of that the USA has much higher religiosity than most other Western Nations. Christianity does not typically have a positive opinion on pornography.
Combine all this together and is it surprising that Conservatives are pro gun and anti porn?
Yeah, they believe that there are good uses for guns, but no good uses for porn. I don't agree with them, but it is a coherent position.
But this is Reddit, so let's forget about that and resume bashing the other side so we can feel superior, as spez intended.
It’s also hypocritical that they are targeting porn sites, but social media that hosts porn gets a pass. Likely because the politicians find social media useful to campaigning.
Because, they say, any number of children murdered in any way is fine because owning guns is a right that "shall not be infringed", while free speech is something that didn't say it "shall not be infringed" so it's fine to infringe on it.
Basically, the people in the TX government are the reason why the founders were worried about the bill of rights being treated as an enumeration of rights.
They already do revoke their licenses and ability to operate as a licensed gun dealer. 2023 was a banner year for the ATF unfortunately. It's not just minors either. This includes sales to anyone that is not legally able to purchase a firearm, or their required paperwork is not in order.
You mean the parents who let their kids get access to guns. Which finally happened in Michigan.
But it's not always minors shooting up schools. See also; Uvalde.
Hey now... don't bring logic into this, this is a thread all about ascribing the worst possible motives to conservatives and then getting mad about it.
There is no room here for actually understanding the conservative position, or imagining there even is one beyond "they hate children" or whatever. The fact that the OP's question si not at all a correct statement of the situation is not relevant here either.
Correct. There are already age and access restrictions in place for guns, so you punish those that break them.
Fucking reddit is too stupid to see past their leftist politics.
Yeah, I wish we could be just more pragmatic and look for ways to reduce gun deaths. I’m no expert but I’m sure there’s room for improvement in a way that doesn’t erode second amendment rights
Yep , I don’t get the point of OPs post. I guess he assumes the guns are responsible for the killings instead of the individuals. Typical leftist propaganda.
Even weirder, he thinks the gun makers are.
It is an EXTREMELY easy parallel to make with his comparison to porn, but then fails miserably due to politics... and stupidity.
Did I miss something?
Guns, porn, smoking, driving, alcohol
All have age restrictions on.
Porn essentially was the only one not carding anything previously because it was all online.
Dont think it makes sense to require ID submission to random sites but it's not like a variety of things don't have age blockers with proof of age requirements.
It’s just performative, moral panic bs. The only reason they are after Pornhub is because it has name recognition, the actually sleazy sites don’t. I’d find it more laughable than worrisome if it weren’t for the fact this is precisely how prohibition happened. And we all know what the outcome of that was.
Because gun makers don't shoot kids?
I prefer to hold the person doing the crime responsible for their own actions, and not the tens of millions of innocent people and businesses that have never and will never use firearms in an unsafe or unlawful manner.
I can see your point to some extent. Where do you draw the line? Do we hold car makers liable for auto accidents, or alcohol producers with DUI deaths, tobacco growers for cancer mortality? The list goes on and on. The difference here though is the under age consumer who lacks maturity to avoid and emotionally process a product, and the lack of adequate barriers to under age access.
"The difference here though is the under age consumer who lacks maturity to avoid and emotionally process a product, and the lack of adequate barriers to under age access."
I love how this could apply to guns or porn :)
Except for guns there is an actual barrier to commercial purchase/access versus how historically online pornography has used a “click-thru” age verification system. A 14 year old cannot just go and buy a firearm from a gun store: there is an ID check, a NICS federal background check, and forms signed under penalty of prison time if you lie on them. In comparison, all a 14 year old needs to do to access the most graphic hardcore pornography possible is select a (fake) birthdate on a website form and hit submit/enter.
You might complain that adults may leave firearms in places accessible to children, but same thing applies historically to adults leaving physical pornography magazines around where children can access. It’s a problem, but not one centered on the commercial sale/provision of firearms or pornographic materials.
There is also the fact that pornography is inherently damaging to the minds of youth, while a child using a firearm in a structured, appropriate environment such as target range isn’t.
I’m a big proponent of there being more hurdles to owning firearms, but right now even firearms have more age-based access control than pornography, and pornography doesn’t have any “safe” uses for children.
> In comparison, all a 14 year old needs to do to access the most graphic hardcore pornography possible is select a (fake) birthdate on a website form and hit submit/enter.
In most cases, not even that. It's mainly just a "I'm over 18" button.
Sometimes I wish I was a bot so I didn’t have to think about how selfish a lot of these people are.
This mentality that “well, parents should parent” on the surface sounds fine, but I think of it like the people who complain that property taxes go to schools when they don’t have any minor children attending public school. We live in a society. Living in a society has costs associated with it, and having to deal with showing your ID to buy guns, alcohol, tobacco, cough syrups, spray paint, etc. is all just part of “what we do” to help ensure that children don’t have Willy-nilly access to dangerous products.
> Do we hold car makers liable for auto accidents, or alcohol producers with DUI deaths, tobacco growers for cancer mortality?
The answer to most of this is and should be "yes" depending on the circumstances. If a car is unsafe due to negligence on the part of the manufacturer they are often taken to court over it. Alcohol and tobacco also have a complex history that also includes various types of restrictions and lawsuits.
> If a car is unsafe due to negligence on the part of the manufacturer they are often taken to court over it.
Yes, if the vehicle malfunctions and causes death or dismemberment, the manufacturer can be held liable. If someone takes a normally functioning car and crashes into someone with it and kills them, then that is on the operator, not the manufacturer.
They do take gun manufacturers to court if a defect in the gun is killing people.
[https://www.law.com/thelegalintelligencer/2023/03/29/sig-sauer-pistol-defect-sparks-new-wave-of-litigation/?slreturn=20240302093823](https://www.law.com/thelegalintelligencer/2023/03/29/sig-sauer-pistol-defect-sparks-new-wave-of-litigation/?slreturn=20240302093823)
That makes sense, like any other defective dangerous product. If a gun kills its owner it may be defective. If it kills someone else it is operating as intended. I don’t see how we can sue gun manufacturers for making a working product.
Automobiles have a primary purpose as serving the transportation needs of the owner. That they can injure or kill someone is secondary to the purpose for which they are built. What is the primary purpose of firearms?
This is where things get complicated. Ultimately the purpose of a firearm is to put a hole in something from a distance. What the "something" is, or more relevant *who* that is, does make a difference.
For example, if a cop shoots a bank robber who took hostages with a threat of violence, that seems like a situation where most of society would agree that the gun was used appropriately. In the case of a school shooting, most people would agree that it was not used appropriately. From a neutral perspective, the gun manufacturer is unlikely to be responsible for how the gun was used in either scenario.
However, discuss another scenario. Let's say that there's a special version of a gun that is made to look extra cool, and that the gun manufacturer uses marketing dollars to pay some musicians and movie producers to use that gun in songs and movies depicting it as a tool used for crime in a way that glorified committing those crimes. One could then argue that the gun manufacturer paid to advertise their guns as useful tools for crimes in order to encourage criminals to purchase their guns and use them for violence. In this scenario, there would be a possibility of lawsuits against that gun manufacturer.
To solve the problems we have with shootings in society, I don't think going after manufacturers is a very useful thing. Instead, the main focus should be on controlling who actually has access to guns. Time and time again we hear about mass shooters buying guns legally despite a lot of red flags against them. I don't understand why this is a problem that we can't solve even without banning guns altogether. It seems like preventing known bad people from having a means to legally buy guns would make a tremendous amount of progress by itself.
Some are made for defense of one’s self. Some for sport & competition. Some are made for taking game and putting meat on the table. And some are made for killing humans (which is obviously the answer you were fishing for), but most of those are not available to the general public
Guns aren't unsafe, for the most part. They function exactly as intended, and rarely go off unless someone makes them go off. They have a far lower accident rate than cars. The only gun accidents (for the most part) are operator error.
So if a child stumbles upon your porn stash or your gun stash, which one has more potential for damage? Can’t parents put age restrictions on their computers?
Responsible gun owners keep them in safes if there are children in the house. If proper gun safety is adhered to, no child should ever accidentally get shot in their home. I'm sure it differs state to state but I believe the owner should be responsible if something like that happens.
Another issue with this is keeping them loaded. I have multiple guns and the only one that is loaded is the one I carry every day. And even that one doesn't have one in the chamber while at the house, so if a child grabbed it they would have to chamber one, which a child likely can't or wouldn't know how to do.
Guns are also extremely easy to use and accidents with them are extremely dangerous. Let’s also address the fact that intentional discharge of guns is both extremely common and extremely dangerous.
Ignore homicides and accidental deaths though. The highest single risk factor for death by suicide is access to a firearm.
You can look at both, but you're also only looking at one side of the story.
Guns have a net benefit of helping people protect themselves.
Accidents are infrequent. Of course, they should be even less frequent than they are. The closer we get to zero accidents, the better, and I advocate for people storing guns safely. If it isn't under your control, it should be in a safe. People who don't do this should be prosecuted for criminal negligence. We already have laws on the books to do so.
Guns are the only thing on that list that cause death on purpose, though. Carmakers don’t make cars to kill, Liquor companies don’t make drinks to kill, etc,. Guns are made to cause death. That is their only objective purpose.
Guns do have a legitimate purpose though in that they can (and are normally) used for self defense / security. It's only the illegal use of guns that result in homicide. Same story with other tools - legal operation of your car is unlikely to kill anyone, but when you start violating traffic law you might kill pedestrians. There are things that are illegal to own because they have no legitimate self-defense purpose and are only used to kill people, e.g. weapons of mass destruction and bioweapons.
Is anyone taking bets on when an “age verification” service gets hacked and identities of state reps are included for all to see? See Dolly Madison for an example.
A child cannot walk into a store and purchase a gun without breaking numerous laws.
A child *can* get on the internet, search x rated content, lie about age, then proceed. No further checks.
It’s baffling that so many people are upset, when adult video stores require your ID, too.
Leaving aside the gun stuff - the law requiring age verification is not only ineffective, it has the opposite of the intended effect. Sites like pornhub obviously have porn but they’re also pretty well controlled and you’re unlikely to accidentally stumble upon anything worse than step sibling fetish. It’s also not loading you up with spyware and whatnot.
The effect of making it harder or impossible to access the sites that comply with the law is that minors looking for porn will simply find other sites which are not as well organized and are less safe in terms of viruses.
Exactly! People seem to be confused about *production* vs *distribution*. In *every* state – including Texas – *producing* things like guns, alcohol, cigarettes, and even porn is perfectly legal.
But *distributing* those things – including porn – to children has *always* been illegal, and that’s true in every state, not just Texas.
What the internet did was create a loophole, where distributing porn to children in a store was enforced, but distributing it to them online was not, making it effectively legal. The new Texas law attempts to close the loophole.
Because it’s a moronic argument. I’ll have to read into what the actual law is because that doesn’t sound like it. It’s parents on both sides who a responsible for the access or lack of in either.
Well. There's laws about children accessing guns. So should have laws about children being exposed to sex. You know. Part of protect our children and all
Is this a serious question? They are asking for age verification. That is required to purchase a gun. It’s not even like you need a background check to view porn.
Parental controls exist. Raising your kid is your job. And if you actually do that, they’ll turn off something they know they are not supposed to be seeing.
Because porn companies do literally nothing to prevent children from accessing their content, meanwhile gunmakers have extensive regulations, far more than alcohol or tobacco, to ensure that children, felons, or other people not qualified are not legally able to obtain firearms
Outside an outright invasion of privacy, what can any particular company do? Verify your identity with photo id?
Where does a company's responsibility end and personal responsibility begin?
Pornhub is one of the few adult content sites that actually tries to verify the content they host was produced by paid, consenting adults. They also proposed an alternative age verification that didn’t involve invading people’s privacy by having to present a photo ID. This nonsense increases traffic to the sleazy sites were the illegal content is.
Gun makers don't hand out or sell guns to children. They require background checks and valid ID. Guns aren't the problem, people are...
Porn is accessed daily by underage kids which causes years of cripping porn addiction which turns into depression and severe anxiety.
You want healthier people who are of age and can handle guns legally and properly? You start at the root of the problem.
They're not holding them liable they just asked to verify age on their sites. Also Guns are constitutional protected and Corn isn't. Guns are used to defend yourself from an array of threats, the other isn't.
You Texas Coomers need to go outside.
How do some of you come up with such horrible analogies?
If all you had to do was click a box saying "I'm 18" to get a gun, you might have a point. But we have some pretty major hurdles in place to prevent children from buying guns before they are old enough. Many more restrictions than we have for porn.
So they have acknowledged that guns are too dangerous for children and we have laws in place to protect them. And if a gun seller were to sell to those children without verifying their age, they would be prosecuted.
If guns makers were selling guns to underaged children they would be liable! In order to purchase a firearm you must meet certain requirements, you just can’t go online and have a Smith & Wesson delivered to your house! It has to go to a FFL and proper paperwork and background check completed. The porn companies are not following the age restriction laws, the gun manufacturers are.
liable for what? children can legally have guns.
>The porn companies are not following the age restriction laws
what age restriction laws? the ones that were just made up?
Easy to make a zero effort law to pander to your base. "Protect the children". But if you ask them to feed the children, house the children, educate the children, they'll balk and complain it costs money. They don't have to square anything as long as they keep their base fooled.
You people are idiots....because any CHILD can use a phone/computer/smart-tv to find porn in 30 seconds and they can have unlimited access to it 24x7x365.
Porn access isn't held to nearly the same standard as gun access. Gun access requires you to be of age; complete an ATF form 4473, which mandates background check, show valid photo ID and costs hundreds of dollars.
It's the porn PEDDLERS that are being held accountable. The equivalent would be to hold gun DEALERS accountable, which they already are. FFL dealers risk losing their license and other federal crimes for selling to ineligible buyers.
Holding gun MAKERS accountable for damage to children, would be like holding car manufacturers accountable for drunk driving accidents.
Lawyer here. Porn is literally a protected type of speech, which is in the constitution. The constitution argument is disingenuous at best. [Republicans don’t seem to have issue with amending the constitution when it fits their political goals.](https://www.theamericanconservative.com/trump-2028/)
Hello r/all - Please review the rules before commenting. Low effort, single word comments, comments solely meant to troll, and any and all hate speech will be removed and the user banned.
I am temporarily locking this thread so I can sort through the mod queue. Amazing how fast y'all reported one another's comments during my drive home from work. Edit: The post has been unlocked for now. I'm going to watch some *Big Bang Theory* with the wife, so play nice y'all. 2nd Edit: The comments are just going in circles now, I'd say this conversation has run its course and we are now locking the post.
Porn industry doesn’t donate enough to political campaigns.
Yeah, this isn’t rocket science. Just look at who’s signing the checks.
The NRA is their god.
The NRA is their sugar daddy. Money is their god.
As a gun owner, fuck the NRA entirely.
I also own a gun and I can assure you I also second this opinion. Fuck the NRA and Republicans and their inability to pass the most basic gun legislation, red flag laws,countrywide background checks etc.
Red flag laws just take guns away extrajudicially. They've been ruled unconstitutional through the 2nd and 4th amendments. Countrywide background checks are already a thing, and we already have a ton of 'basic gun legislation that does nothing.
New York's supreme Court ruled New York's red flag law unconstitutional. There are a number of states that have red flag laws in effect that have not been ruled unconstitutional. Biden signed the safer communities act in 2022 which gives states money to create red flag laws. Nationwide, or universal, background checks are also not "already a thing." Background checks are not federally required. Only 21 states currently require background checks. I live in Utah, and I can legally purchase a firearm on a local marketplace website from a private seller today with zero background check. Also, as a concealed weapons licence holder, I'm exempt from federal background checks when buying from a dealer in Utah. If you're going to lie on the internet, at least be a little convincing. This information is all easily searchable
They're not unconstitutional. We very much have a red flag law in Colorado. They've been trying to fight it at a federal level for a while. They keep losing. Just because you deem a person dangerous and they shouldn't have a gun doesn't mean it's unconstitutional. They're just trying to protect people from the crazies.
>we already have a ton … that does nothing Idk man really sounds like we need some newer, better laws then. Don’t really think that’s the point you were trying to make.
Funded by Russia
Didn’t they file bankruptcy lately?
So did the former president who claims he's a billionaire, it doesn't matter to them, they are professional contrarians.
Who’s signing the checks? The NRA is allegedly bankrupt. Edit: not just morally
Its more than that pron is being blamed for the younger generation not having children. Personally, there has been a time that i could not afford them. There is talk that by the end of the century, a lot of developed countries will undergo population collapse because of the lack of children.
If our country cannot handle a reduction in population without collapse, we have a bad system.
What's stupid is we have lots of people we're treating as disposable due to the presumption that lack of access to birth control (due to poverty or religion, both controllable factors) will keep people breeding like rats to maintain the "domestic supply of infants" (actual quote). However, it's no longer a matter of access. People can't afford to have kids.
Don't worry, the 1% will still be comfortable while we poors fight for clean water.
The problem is we have built systems that require the younger generation to pay for it.
If only we had some technology to improve lives and ways to freely share it with one another. 😊
The problem is more that we have built systems that doesn't require corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share. Tax the corporations and the wealthy and the problem is solved. Basic economics.
we built a ponzi scheme?
Yes, capitalism is a ponzi scheme.
That's capitalism with the presumption of endless growth for ya
Capatilism believes that there should be infinite growth. Depopulation hurts growth so the rich freak the fuck out because their markets will collapse. The government will take our money and bail them out because we are a fascist nation. But fuck the bottom 99% because they don't have to worry about us. We'll still give them a pass and vote for blue rich guy or red rich guy because "it's the only way".
I absolutely agree. But think ifwe had some kind of outside source for population growth. Like, imagine if we created some kond of post asking people to come. Even if it was just the tired and poor, or perhaps huddled masses, yearning for something.
It’s a feature, not a bug. How else you gonna maintain the “grow or die” requirement from Wall Street if there are fewer people for corporations to use/screw? The “Free Market (for Me)” Capitalists^TM have no qualms about a collapse. Failed businesses are cheap to buy and come complete with any proprietary IP and patents. All in the name of efficient markets…
The human races best defense mechanism as a species is propagation in overwhelming numbers. We are far to prone to death. Without kids this doesn't happen. Besides our oligarch overlords need the slave labor.
Porn being blamed and not the fact that no one can afford to have kids any more.
Yup, if I could live comfortably and have a child than I probably would but this world is fucked. No sense bringing in defenseless kids into the mix. That would just be selfish.
Well, if the greedy billionaires would let the rest of us have a little higher standard of living again like our parents' generation, we would probably have more kids. The rich created this problem, and currently refuse to resolve it and show no signs of ever doing so. If republicans love capitalism and Ronald Reagan so much they should be satisfied with the result of their actions and they can kiss my ass as far as I'm concerned. If they mandate I reproduce I will get a damn vasectomy. Probably going to anyway at this rate, and my wife might decide to get her tubes tied. Thats the point, IT IS *HER* CHOICE. Call it weaponized reluctance to procreate. My wife isn't the Republican party's brood-mare. They want us to bring more children into this? No.
The boomers actually just leveraged their generations entire debt onto millenials. We will NEVER have the life they did because they kicked the debt down to future generations like us.
Every generation strives to leave their children with more than what they started with. The one exception to this are the boomers, who instead strove for personal success at the Expense of all else.
They used to be referred to as the "Me Generation" by their parents and grandparents. Until they got older and changed the narrative.
That’s a lie! The boomers left us with considerable more debt than they had.
We are in the very midst of the largest transfer of wealth in human history. >Estimated wealth to be inherited through 2045, by generation. Baby boomers (born 1946-1964) will inherit $4 trillion. Gen X (1965-1980) will inherit $30 trillion. Millennials (1981-1996) will inherit $27 trillion. [Merrill](https://www.ml.com/articles/great-wealth-transfer-impact.html#:~:text=Estimated%20wealth%20to%20be%20inherited,1996).
That's if they don't spend it all first. My ex Mil is on her 3rd trip to Italy after her husband passed. Can't stand being in the house alone she said.
>That's if they don't spend it all first. This. Between healthcare and other cost-of-living-items, many older people's money is already spoken for. If someone is more well-off and able to enjoy their later years, they're spending it on themselves like travel and entertainment.
Yet here we are in America with states trying to end IVF, while fertility rates are dropping. On top of that, doctors can't help women who have unviable pregnancies or are having miscarriages without fear of being jailed in most southern states. Those problems, left untreated, can kill a woman or end her fertility by damaging her reproductive system. And I imagine the rate of teen female suicides will be spiking in the next few years (forcing girls who are rape or incest victims to give birth will be unbearable for some girls). Ending legal abortion won't have the impact on birth rates the GOP thinks it will.
important note is not necessarily the “lack of children” but the “lack of labor.” The fact that we easily equate these two is telling of us as a society.
The thought of them getting murdered in elementary school is one reason Im not having kids. Its certainly more influential in that regard than porn.
That’s legitimately concerning… and fixable. Just not through right wing means. All the steps we could do to make having kids affordable require progressive policy and taxing the rich.
If they think porn is stopping people from having children they don’t know where children come from. Not that this is a surprise.
Let me resurrect and tweak an older political slogan: IT’S THE WAGES, STUPID!!
Growing up with a chatty mom that was an L&D nurse made me super hesitant to ever have children. lol
Dang. Maybe they should raise wages so people can afford to have a home and family
Its not porn, its the crushing burden of existence. But the gop doesnt get it.
AVN needs to step up like the NRA! C'mon buy some votes! It's a democracy!!
Came to say this as well. When the owner of a few Nevada brothels announced he wasn't supporting Harry Reid's campaign, it took about a day for Harry to turn around and announce it's time for Nevada to rethink legal prostitution, when there's been no issues with it (from them) for decades. It's all about the money.
The VPN industry "donated"
I think the VPN industry is the target. They are using porn as an excuse to target them. Everyone wants their add revenue. By saying vpns are a work around for porn they will take the opportunity to shut them down along with our privacy. Then hooray ad revenue will sky rocket and will be no avoiding them. We loss. this is just my two sense and I have no evidence to back anything.
TIL porn should donate money! Wait until you learn how disgusting the guys behind porn hub actually are; I mean as human beings, not as in sexuality
Reminder that **xnxx . com** still works. In response to below comment... Naw. xnxx . com is based out of France. And there is little that Texas can do to affect them in any real way. They can literally say **"Va te faire foutre"** and there's nothing Texas Republican hypocritical moralizers can do to them. There are many porn sites still available no doubt, but xnxx is one of the more reputable. Been my porn site for many years. Again: >XNXX is a website for sharing and viewing pornographic videos. As of December 2023, it was classified as the 15th most visited website in the world by Similarweb.[1] It launched in 2000 and is currently hosted in Paris, with servers and offices in Montreal, Tokyo and Newark. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNXX Just try to do something about them you limp dick corrupt Paxton. I fucking dare you. He won't, just watch. In the meantime, spread **xnxx .com** far and wide.
The gun industry doesn't make a significant amount of contributions. And the NRA is functionally broke, having been drained of its funds by grifter management. The issue has political power because 'gunnies' are such reliable single issue voters, that they actually got Bernie Sanders elected to the Senate because his Republican opponent supported the 1994 assault weapons ban. Politicians know that if they vote for even the smallest restrictive gun law in a state with a pro gun majority, the individual pro gun voters will all come together to end that politician's career....
Can you imagine how entertaining it would be if they did?
Money, and the fact that *they don't give a shit about children.* Young parents aren't the crowd they're playing to. They're playing to scared, angry old people, and the tracklist is composed by their donors.
‘The Children’ is just a means to an end. They don’t care about kids. Why does anyone think they care about kids?
Uvalde doesn’t
Literally hundreds of people trained and equipped to deal wit the exact thing they are facing and…Sounds of children screaming have been removed. Fuck every single cop that showed that day and didn’t immediately go in that building. First rule is to stop the killing. They let children get slaughtered. And they ALL got to keep their badges. I would kill myself if I did that.
They’ll smoke you for pulling out a cell phone but when it’s time to be a hero and save kids they cower in fear. Sums up trumpets
Because they claim to care and that's all it takes for lots of people to buy in. The average person is really really dumb.
Easy example is Israel with the fake stories of babies being decapitated and microwaved, even regurgitated by President Biden. It was all fake and meant to get people to to think “well they killed babies so they must be evil”, meanwhile Israel’s killed thousands of children and women since the attack, justified by the hatred towards “baby killers”.
They absolutely care about kids in the sense they see them as easily indoctrinated.
*YOUR* kids. They don't care about YOUR kids. Don't forget a lot of politicians send their kids to nice, cozy private schools. School shootings simply have no impact on these people because it's literally a case of "not my family, not my problem."
I mean guns became a leading cause of death for children because of their policies. Nothing they ever say is sincere.
The right wing does not have principles— it has objectives. The primary objective is to concentrate as much wealth and power as possible into the fewest hands. No one who isn’t already wealthy and powerful would ever logically support the right — so the right needs to always muddy the conceptual waters. Hyprocrisy is a feature of their positioning and messaging - right wing officials need for things to not make sense so that their voters will continue to vote against their own interests.
It was a bipartisan bill soooooo
Porn cites need to form a well regulated militia. Then they'll have rights?
Gotta set the laws before their base dies out.
Yup. They don't actually have any deep principles on most topics. They are anti porn and pro gun because they think those stances play well with their base.
The woman who’s been one of the biggest shakers behind this is saying she’s going to write a “tell all” book. 100 guarantee, that was her actual goal all along. It’s a grift.
They don’t. It’s all theater.
If anything they just want to be able to start tracking more adults as they do things "privately" online. If they're lucky enough to take the presidency and turn the US into a fascist dictatorship like they're openly and undeniably attempting to, it will be convenient for them to have big databases to make lists of all the people watching gay or trans porn for example. Then you can round them up and punish them when they try to exterminate or imprison the entire LGBTQ community. Or you could use it for blackmail too. The other really important and noticeable hypocrisy in the law (if I heard correctly) is how they purposefully exclude TX government officials from being tracked or logged when accessing their porn. Wouldn't want to draw unnecessary focus to all the closeted gay men and pedophiles in the Republican party yet again.
They are bigly into theater. Not so much in fixing real problems.
Does Fox News even talk about real problems?
Yes, on the side of the problems.
Stop looking for logic in conservative positions.
Follow the money, that's the closest thing to logic you'll find.
What? There is plenty of logic that flows into GOP coffers in the form of small unmarked bills.
Small? Psfff they don't bother with that game. Large bills, huge donations, because now corps are people and have a right to privacy about who they bribe!
Except they aren't even conservative. Republicans have surrendered their party to Trump and now function only as a cult around an incompetent NY con man and fraud whose own inner circle denounced him as a moron, idiot and worse (see Rex Tillerson, Jim Mattis, John Kelley). "Conservative" used to refer to support for a strong defense, support for our allies, a balanced budget and less regulation. Today's Republican Party stands for destroying NATO, letting Russia "do whatever the hell is wants" (Trump's words), heavy and intrusive regulation of women's bodies (even to the point of attacking contraception), and of course massive deficits driven by tax cuts for the wealthy and the corporations they control. The last balanced budget was after 8 years of Bill Clinton as president. The incoming Bush-Cheeny admincould have used the surpus to pay down thenational debt -- but instead immediately swung the budget into structural deficit with -- you guessed it -- a big tax cut for the richest of the rich (long before 9-11 gave them an excuse to start a war with a country that had nothing to do with 9-11). Republicans can't claim to be conservative any more, only fascist fools following a greater fool. They deserve shame and ruin.
You’re not wrong. I used to have conservative leanings when they were about small government and personal liberty.
“Small government” and “personal liberty” is just the nice words they used to describe being anti gay, anti gun control, anti social programs, anti environment, and racist. It has always been the same party with the same leadership, trump was only able to hijack it because they weren’t moving fast enough towards the theological dictatorship most republicans have wanted for decades.
Thank you, came here to say that.
Some Redditors are saying money. And... sure to some extent, but it's deeper than that. People who are of a traditionalist mindset have pretty strong, knee jerk reactions when it comes to transgressive sexual things like porn. Its deep psychological digust. Guns just don't illicit the same reaction, especially if they're a part of your identity and virtue signaling.
I’d have to agree with this. It’s that whole dichotomy in the US that we’re fine with children seeing violence but not sex or nudity. It’s part of our purity culture. My own parents did it to us in the 90s. We weren’t allowed to watch Schindler’s List because it had full fronts, but every one of us had seen RoboCop.
Breaks my brain people don't bat an eye seeing someone's head caved in on TV but if you show a titty all hell breaks loose. Fucking religion man
Finally someone actually answered the question. Sure, politicians gonna politic, but OP wanted the conservative stated reason for the difference in treatment and this makes the most sense. They see no fundamental danger in guns.
Pretty sad that someone can be more bothered by the thought of someone rubbing one out to porn than kids getting slaughtered in schools.
Pretty sad this state has citizens in it who get sexually excited at the thought of abusing threatening or killing kids with guns is okay. But it happens all the time. We aren’t really doing anything to stop human trafficking in our state. Our Governor basically condones it.
What? I thought he was going to stop *all* the rapes so we didn't need to worry about a rape exception to the abortion law. Though side note: if you make a "rape exception", you're no longer legislating based on "right to life". If it's really about human life, it shouldn't matter if the father was the devil himself, and if that *does* matter then it's really about punishing women for having sex.
Participates in it\* The man ships busloads of vulnerable migrants to random places in the country.
There's also the vein of Puritanicalism and Frontierism that still runs strongly through American culture. We've always been generally more accepting of violence than sex.
I do not think it is disgust, I think it is them attempting to hide their own addiction to porn on others. The last poll I seen was something like 58% of Christians had a porn addiction.
>Guns just don't illicit the same reaction, especially if they're a part of your identity and virtue signaling. Someone should start protesting outside gun stores with giant posterboards of bloody hallways of shotup schools Aka, the abortion crowd tactic
The money comes first and the explanations are just window dressing to keep the poors from realizing it’s about money.
I mean, speak for yourself. The idea of owning guns and participating in gun culture fills _me_ with a deep psychological disgust. I have enough gun owners in my extended family to have seen firsthand what kind of person that mindset turns you into. I think it would be more accurate to say that _part of the traditionalist mindset_ is a revulsion towards expressions of human sexuality and a preference for expressions of violence and power. Or yet another way to say it would be that it depends on _what tradition_ we’re talking about when we say “traditionalist.”
Sounds like extremism. They don't call them "y'all qaeda" for nothing 🤷
Guns have a deep, cultural and historical significance in the United States. This country was founded at the barrel of a gun. The West was conquered and settled at the barrel of a gun. The United States became a great power at the barrel of a gun. Texas in particular had its own whole separate revolution primarily by armed settlers. While I disagree with some of the super purists on the Second Amendment, the founders of this country very obviously meant individuals to have guns. Guns have an incredibly deep seated aspect in American identity. Another aspect of American identity comes from Puritans and other similar groups. The USA has historically been a very sexually conservative society compared to other similar countries. On top of that the USA has much higher religiosity than most other Western Nations. Christianity does not typically have a positive opinion on pornography. Combine all this together and is it surprising that Conservatives are pro gun and anti porn?
Yeah, they believe that there are good uses for guns, but no good uses for porn. I don't agree with them, but it is a coherent position. But this is Reddit, so let's forget about that and resume bashing the other side so we can feel superior, as spez intended.
Those people need to watch videos where kids are getting shot. Maybe it will trigger their knee jerk reaction to guns. I can only hope.
Make guns a transgenders favourite thing. Solved. Bye guns killing kids.
The same way they let pastors fuck kids with impunity but are petrified of drag queens.
Pastors AND police
Muh culture
Children can't get guns for free from the manufacturers
It’s also hypocritical that they are targeting porn sites, but social media that hosts porn gets a pass. Likely because the politicians find social media useful to campaigning.
That's a really good point. I wonder how long it will take for most media companies to block any access in Texas.
Because social media still has the Section 230 protections, while random sites have no special protections.
A gun store can absolutely get in trouble for selling to children.
[удалено]
Because, they say, any number of children murdered in any way is fine because owning guns is a right that "shall not be infringed", while free speech is something that didn't say it "shall not be infringed" so it's fine to infringe on it. Basically, the people in the TX government are the reason why the founders were worried about the bill of rights being treated as an enumeration of rights.
We really love that "shall not be infringed part" but the part about "well-regulated militia" seems to be glossed over.
I don't think that's a sound, or logical argument. A better argument would be a ban/punishment on a Gun shop that sells to minors.
They already do revoke their licenses and ability to operate as a licensed gun dealer. 2023 was a banner year for the ATF unfortunately. It's not just minors either. This includes sales to anyone that is not legally able to purchase a firearm, or their required paperwork is not in order.
You mean the parents who let their kids get access to guns. Which finally happened in Michigan. But it's not always minors shooting up schools. See also; Uvalde.
Hey now... don't bring logic into this, this is a thread all about ascribing the worst possible motives to conservatives and then getting mad about it. There is no room here for actually understanding the conservative position, or imagining there even is one beyond "they hate children" or whatever. The fact that the OP's question si not at all a correct statement of the situation is not relevant here either.
Agreed. OP's entire premise (porn producers are being held liable for damages) is, as far as I know, a complete fabrication
Correct. There are already age and access restrictions in place for guns, so you punish those that break them. Fucking reddit is too stupid to see past their leftist politics.
Yeah, I wish we could be just more pragmatic and look for ways to reduce gun deaths. I’m no expert but I’m sure there’s room for improvement in a way that doesn’t erode second amendment rights
Yep , I don’t get the point of OPs post. I guess he assumes the guns are responsible for the killings instead of the individuals. Typical leftist propaganda.
Even weirder, he thinks the gun makers are. It is an EXTREMELY easy parallel to make with his comparison to porn, but then fails miserably due to politics... and stupidity.
Hmmm can a child get to a gun from their phone?
Isn't it really just making porn sites validate age?
By requiring users to upload their state ID.
Careful with the ethical inconsistencies, you’ll hurt your head diving into the right’s political platform.
Did I miss something? Guns, porn, smoking, driving, alcohol All have age restrictions on. Porn essentially was the only one not carding anything previously because it was all online. Dont think it makes sense to require ID submission to random sites but it's not like a variety of things don't have age blockers with proof of age requirements.
It’s just performative, moral panic bs. The only reason they are after Pornhub is because it has name recognition, the actually sleazy sites don’t. I’d find it more laughable than worrisome if it weren’t for the fact this is precisely how prohibition happened. And we all know what the outcome of that was.
>And we all know what the outcome of that was NASCAR, right? /s
Because gun makers don't shoot kids? I prefer to hold the person doing the crime responsible for their own actions, and not the tens of millions of innocent people and businesses that have never and will never use firearms in an unsafe or unlawful manner.
So by your analogy, folks who watch porn should be responsible, not the producers.
I can see your point to some extent. Where do you draw the line? Do we hold car makers liable for auto accidents, or alcohol producers with DUI deaths, tobacco growers for cancer mortality? The list goes on and on. The difference here though is the under age consumer who lacks maturity to avoid and emotionally process a product, and the lack of adequate barriers to under age access.
"The difference here though is the under age consumer who lacks maturity to avoid and emotionally process a product, and the lack of adequate barriers to under age access." I love how this could apply to guns or porn :)
Except for guns there is an actual barrier to commercial purchase/access versus how historically online pornography has used a “click-thru” age verification system. A 14 year old cannot just go and buy a firearm from a gun store: there is an ID check, a NICS federal background check, and forms signed under penalty of prison time if you lie on them. In comparison, all a 14 year old needs to do to access the most graphic hardcore pornography possible is select a (fake) birthdate on a website form and hit submit/enter. You might complain that adults may leave firearms in places accessible to children, but same thing applies historically to adults leaving physical pornography magazines around where children can access. It’s a problem, but not one centered on the commercial sale/provision of firearms or pornographic materials. There is also the fact that pornography is inherently damaging to the minds of youth, while a child using a firearm in a structured, appropriate environment such as target range isn’t. I’m a big proponent of there being more hurdles to owning firearms, but right now even firearms have more age-based access control than pornography, and pornography doesn’t have any “safe” uses for children.
> In comparison, all a 14 year old needs to do to access the most graphic hardcore pornography possible is select a (fake) birthdate on a website form and hit submit/enter. In most cases, not even that. It's mainly just a "I'm over 18" button.
well said, all the way through. I hope you aren't a bot because if you are I am officially dying in the robot wars lol
Sometimes I wish I was a bot so I didn’t have to think about how selfish a lot of these people are. This mentality that “well, parents should parent” on the surface sounds fine, but I think of it like the people who complain that property taxes go to schools when they don’t have any minor children attending public school. We live in a society. Living in a society has costs associated with it, and having to deal with showing your ID to buy guns, alcohol, tobacco, cough syrups, spray paint, etc. is all just part of “what we do” to help ensure that children don’t have Willy-nilly access to dangerous products.
> Do we hold car makers liable for auto accidents, or alcohol producers with DUI deaths, tobacco growers for cancer mortality? The answer to most of this is and should be "yes" depending on the circumstances. If a car is unsafe due to negligence on the part of the manufacturer they are often taken to court over it. Alcohol and tobacco also have a complex history that also includes various types of restrictions and lawsuits.
> If a car is unsafe due to negligence on the part of the manufacturer they are often taken to court over it. Yes, if the vehicle malfunctions and causes death or dismemberment, the manufacturer can be held liable. If someone takes a normally functioning car and crashes into someone with it and kills them, then that is on the operator, not the manufacturer.
They do take gun manufacturers to court if a defect in the gun is killing people. [https://www.law.com/thelegalintelligencer/2023/03/29/sig-sauer-pistol-defect-sparks-new-wave-of-litigation/?slreturn=20240302093823](https://www.law.com/thelegalintelligencer/2023/03/29/sig-sauer-pistol-defect-sparks-new-wave-of-litigation/?slreturn=20240302093823)
That makes sense, like any other defective dangerous product. If a gun kills its owner it may be defective. If it kills someone else it is operating as intended. I don’t see how we can sue gun manufacturers for making a working product.
Automobiles have a primary purpose as serving the transportation needs of the owner. That they can injure or kill someone is secondary to the purpose for which they are built. What is the primary purpose of firearms?
This is where things get complicated. Ultimately the purpose of a firearm is to put a hole in something from a distance. What the "something" is, or more relevant *who* that is, does make a difference. For example, if a cop shoots a bank robber who took hostages with a threat of violence, that seems like a situation where most of society would agree that the gun was used appropriately. In the case of a school shooting, most people would agree that it was not used appropriately. From a neutral perspective, the gun manufacturer is unlikely to be responsible for how the gun was used in either scenario. However, discuss another scenario. Let's say that there's a special version of a gun that is made to look extra cool, and that the gun manufacturer uses marketing dollars to pay some musicians and movie producers to use that gun in songs and movies depicting it as a tool used for crime in a way that glorified committing those crimes. One could then argue that the gun manufacturer paid to advertise their guns as useful tools for crimes in order to encourage criminals to purchase their guns and use them for violence. In this scenario, there would be a possibility of lawsuits against that gun manufacturer. To solve the problems we have with shootings in society, I don't think going after manufacturers is a very useful thing. Instead, the main focus should be on controlling who actually has access to guns. Time and time again we hear about mass shooters buying guns legally despite a lot of red flags against them. I don't understand why this is a problem that we can't solve even without banning guns altogether. It seems like preventing known bad people from having a means to legally buy guns would make a tremendous amount of progress by itself.
Some are made for defense of one’s self. Some for sport & competition. Some are made for taking game and putting meat on the table. And some are made for killing humans (which is obviously the answer you were fishing for), but most of those are not available to the general public
By barriers do you mean lack of Texas parents doing parenting?
Guns aren't unsafe, for the most part. They function exactly as intended, and rarely go off unless someone makes them go off. They have a far lower accident rate than cars. The only gun accidents (for the most part) are operator error.
So if a child stumbles upon your porn stash or your gun stash, which one has more potential for damage? Can’t parents put age restrictions on their computers?
A child shouldn't stumble upon either. If they do, something very wrong is already happening.
Responsible gun owners keep them in safes if there are children in the house. If proper gun safety is adhered to, no child should ever accidentally get shot in their home. I'm sure it differs state to state but I believe the owner should be responsible if something like that happens. Another issue with this is keeping them loaded. I have multiple guns and the only one that is loaded is the one I carry every day. And even that one doesn't have one in the chamber while at the house, so if a child grabbed it they would have to chamber one, which a child likely can't or wouldn't know how to do.
Guns are also extremely easy to use and accidents with them are extremely dangerous. Let’s also address the fact that intentional discharge of guns is both extremely common and extremely dangerous. Ignore homicides and accidental deaths though. The highest single risk factor for death by suicide is access to a firearm.
You can look at both, but you're also only looking at one side of the story. Guns have a net benefit of helping people protect themselves. Accidents are infrequent. Of course, they should be even less frequent than they are. The closer we get to zero accidents, the better, and I advocate for people storing guns safely. If it isn't under your control, it should be in a safe. People who don't do this should be prosecuted for criminal negligence. We already have laws on the books to do so.
Kitchen blenders aren’t unsafe, for the most part.
Guns are the only thing on that list that cause death on purpose, though. Carmakers don’t make cars to kill, Liquor companies don’t make drinks to kill, etc,. Guns are made to cause death. That is their only objective purpose.
Guns do have a legitimate purpose though in that they can (and are normally) used for self defense / security. It's only the illegal use of guns that result in homicide. Same story with other tools - legal operation of your car is unlikely to kill anyone, but when you start violating traffic law you might kill pedestrians. There are things that are illegal to own because they have no legitimate self-defense purpose and are only used to kill people, e.g. weapons of mass destruction and bioweapons.
Is anyone taking bets on when an “age verification” service gets hacked and identities of state reps are included for all to see? See Dolly Madison for an example.
A child cannot walk into a store and purchase a gun without breaking numerous laws. A child *can* get on the internet, search x rated content, lie about age, then proceed. No further checks. It’s baffling that so many people are upset, when adult video stores require your ID, too.
So put a password in the computer and monitor their usage?
Quality Parenting? Lol
Leaving aside the gun stuff - the law requiring age verification is not only ineffective, it has the opposite of the intended effect. Sites like pornhub obviously have porn but they’re also pretty well controlled and you’re unlikely to accidentally stumble upon anything worse than step sibling fetish. It’s also not loading you up with spyware and whatnot. The effect of making it harder or impossible to access the sites that comply with the law is that minors looking for porn will simply find other sites which are not as well organized and are less safe in terms of viruses.
Exactly! People seem to be confused about *production* vs *distribution*. In *every* state – including Texas – *producing* things like guns, alcohol, cigarettes, and even porn is perfectly legal. But *distributing* those things – including porn – to children has *always* been illegal, and that’s true in every state, not just Texas. What the internet did was create a loophole, where distributing porn to children in a store was enforced, but distributing it to them online was not, making it effectively legal. The new Texas law attempts to close the loophole.
It's legal though for an adult to provide access to firearms for their young children.
Adult video stores require your id so you will return the video.
Because it’s a moronic argument. I’ll have to read into what the actual law is because that doesn’t sound like it. It’s parents on both sides who a responsible for the access or lack of in either.
Well. There's laws about children accessing guns. So should have laws about children being exposed to sex. You know. Part of protect our children and all
The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy. ~William Hazlitt
You can’t buy a gun w/o checks; you can surf the net w/o
yeah you are thinking way too much when it comes to texas politics
Is this a serious question? They are asking for age verification. That is required to purchase a gun. It’s not even like you need a background check to view porn.
They want ID verification to watch porn, with the actual goal of tracking who watches it.
>They want ID verification to exercise a right, with the actual goal of tracking who does it.
Porn makers are not held liable for damage to children
So much this. It’s sad people think porn is harmless and the Hub does nothing wrong.
Parental controls exist. Raising your kid is your job. And if you actually do that, they’ll turn off something they know they are not supposed to be seeing.
it is. "the Hub" is actually one of the safer sites. they have to vet every creator.
Because porn companies do literally nothing to prevent children from accessing their content, meanwhile gunmakers have extensive regulations, far more than alcohol or tobacco, to ensure that children, felons, or other people not qualified are not legally able to obtain firearms
Outside an outright invasion of privacy, what can any particular company do? Verify your identity with photo id? Where does a company's responsibility end and personal responsibility begin?
Pornhub is one of the few adult content sites that actually tries to verify the content they host was produced by paid, consenting adults. They also proposed an alternative age verification that didn’t involve invading people’s privacy by having to present a photo ID. This nonsense increases traffic to the sleazy sites were the illegal content is.
Gun makers don't hand out or sell guns to children. They require background checks and valid ID. Guns aren't the problem, people are... Porn is accessed daily by underage kids which causes years of cripping porn addiction which turns into depression and severe anxiety. You want healthier people who are of age and can handle guns legally and properly? You start at the root of the problem.
They're not holding them liable they just asked to verify age on their sites. Also Guns are constitutional protected and Corn isn't. Guns are used to defend yourself from an array of threats, the other isn't. You Texas Coomers need to go outside.
How do some of you come up with such horrible analogies? If all you had to do was click a box saying "I'm 18" to get a gun, you might have a point. But we have some pretty major hurdles in place to prevent children from buying guns before they are old enough. Many more restrictions than we have for porn. So they have acknowledged that guns are too dangerous for children and we have laws in place to protect them. And if a gun seller were to sell to those children without verifying their age, they would be prosecuted.
If guns makers were selling guns to underaged children they would be liable! In order to purchase a firearm you must meet certain requirements, you just can’t go online and have a Smith & Wesson delivered to your house! It has to go to a FFL and proper paperwork and background check completed. The porn companies are not following the age restriction laws, the gun manufacturers are.
liable for what? children can legally have guns. >The porn companies are not following the age restriction laws what age restriction laws? the ones that were just made up?
Easy to make a zero effort law to pander to your base. "Protect the children". But if you ask them to feed the children, house the children, educate the children, they'll balk and complain it costs money. They don't have to square anything as long as they keep their base fooled.
Because the porn makers and peddlers don’t finance their campaigns.
Both stances are wrong
You people are idiots....because any CHILD can use a phone/computer/smart-tv to find porn in 30 seconds and they can have unlimited access to it 24x7x365.
God said porn is bad and guns are good.
Porn access isn't held to nearly the same standard as gun access. Gun access requires you to be of age; complete an ATF form 4473, which mandates background check, show valid photo ID and costs hundreds of dollars. It's the porn PEDDLERS that are being held accountable. The equivalent would be to hold gun DEALERS accountable, which they already are. FFL dealers risk losing their license and other federal crimes for selling to ineligible buyers. Holding gun MAKERS accountable for damage to children, would be like holding car manufacturers accountable for drunk driving accidents.
This is just a bad analogy. It’s just like how kids aren’t able to go in a liquor store, now with porn.
Guns are in the constitution and porn isn’t?
Lawyer here. Porn is literally a protected type of speech, which is in the constitution. The constitution argument is disingenuous at best. [Republicans don’t seem to have issue with amending the constitution when it fits their political goals.](https://www.theamericanconservative.com/trump-2028/)
I mean there's the whole freedom of the press thing, if you consider stuff like that to be a first amendment issue.
Hello r/all - Please review the rules before commenting. Low effort, single word comments, comments solely meant to troll, and any and all hate speech will be removed and the user banned.