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Behaviour on this page: Arbitration case pages exist to assist the Arbitration Committee in arriving at a fair, well-informed decision. You are required to act with appropriate decorum during this case. While grievances must often be aired during a case, you are expected to air them without being rude or hostile, and to respond calmly to allegations against you. Accusations of misbehaviour posted in this case must be proven with clear evidence (and otherwise not made at all). Editors who conduct themselves inappropriately during a case may be sanctioned by an arbitrator or clerk, without further warning, by being banned from further participation in the case, or being blocked altogether. Personal attacks against other users, including arbitrators or clerks, will be met with sanctions. Behavior during a case may also be considered by the committee in arriving at a final decision.

Preliminary statements by uninvolved editors

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Statement by uninvolved editor Ubikwit

I've noticed the action on this article and talk page from contributions made by people on my watch list, but have not gotten involved in the ongoing content dispute.
On the other hand, when I did get around to taking a look at the article, I noticed what can only be described as an astoundingly poorly sourced section related to Japan that amounted to presenting a contrived view of history in order to promote the position that gun control is equivalent to oppressive government or something to that effect.
Even the title of that section "Japan of the Shogunate" (as opposed to "Tokugawa Japan" or "Edo period Japan") was a strange construct that would not have been seen outside of Misplaced Pages. It does, however, demonstrate how ignorant the editor that posted that text was of Japanese history, as there have been more than one Shogunate#Shogunate in Japan. So why is it that people that don't have a adequate knowledge on a topic or RS that hold up to scrutiny post such bullshit?
I would think that there may be issues related to misrepresentation of sources to push a POV on this politically charged topic, but such form of advocacy would seem to be nothing new and a problem that Misplaced Pages has yet to devise a method of adequately dealing with due to the close relationship of the editing conduct to the ambiguity of some of the content related policies.
A number of well-considered comments have been made regarding the recent content dispute, but it is beyond me as to whether those comments demonstrate that the problem is solely a content dispute, or embodies conduct issues that can be dealt with here. Contentious editing is not necessarily something that requires examination under the microscope, so to speak. --Ubikwit_{見学/迷惑} 22:19, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

• user:EdChem has posted findings that confirm and highlight the problem of misrepresentation of sources, a problem that is anything but trivial on contentious topics with a religious or political dimension. It's more insidious than WP:OR because it remains obscured until someone checks the sources, making it harder to catch, and leading to further complications. Maybe the community needs a stronger policy to deal with that, but the relevant findings of this case could serve to elucidate the possible parameters for creating or modifying policy.--Ubikwit_{見学/迷惑} 11:13, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Statement by Arthur Rubin

Although there are content and policy issues, in addition to conduct issues (most of which amount to WP:IDIDNTHERETHAT, rather than outright personal attacks), there is the question of which policies apply and what they mean. I known ArbCom doesn't comment on content or set policies, but I believe it may comment on policy. If I'm wrong, then this needs to await specific diffs before it can be determined whether the matter should be before ArbCom. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:39, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Statement by tangentally involved Black Kite

Contentious political subject inevitably produces contentious article. The locus of the dispute is a number of people (including, but not limited to US right-leaning and pro-gun editors) wishing to include an extended analysis of the Nazis' gun control laws in order, it appears, to promote the synthesis of the flawed "gun control=Nazism" myth popular amongst the NRA and their associated fellow travellers. There is a perfectly good article for discussing this issue, and it is Gun control in Germany; it doesn't need a prominent place here. Having said that, this is a content dispute; I don't see any behaviour by editors raising itself to the point where ArbCom needs to step in. Edit: having read ROG5728's comment, especially the response to Andy, I withdraw that; positions are too entrenched and the material being added potentially offensive to casual editors so that the committee may indeed, wish to accept.

Issues at WP:ANI in the very recent past

• 18 December: Gaijin42, ROG5728, Justanonymous and North8000 attempt to get Goethean topic banned. It doesn't go well, including Gaijin42 being temporarily blocked for a post which insinuates Holocaust denial of other editors
• 30 December: ROG5728 and others involved here attempt to get AndyTheGrump blocked and/or topic banned. This doesn't go well either when it is revealed that ROG5728 has canvassed only the editors that support their POV to comment on the report.

Oddly, neither of these reports were linked by Gaijin42 in their list of attempts to resolve this case. Black Kite (talk) 15:14, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

@North8000, in the first link, you suggest "Give Gooethen a rest from the article", so I don't think that is incorrect. I take your point that in the second ANI, although you back up others involved, you don't specifically ask for sanctions, so I have reworded that link. Black Kite (talk) 00:08, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Statement by outside editor Robert McClenon

This is a long-simmering content dispute with conduct issues interfering with the ability to resolve the content issues. The content issues are inherently contentious due to the subject matter, making it difficult but essential for the encyclopedic article to present a neutral point of view, reflecting the merits of all positions on gun control without undue weight. I urge the ArbCom to accept this case to look at the conduct issues that have interfered with the (already difficult) goal of achieving NPOV on content. ArbCom is the only forum that is able to address the conduct issues that interfere with addressing the content issues (that is, the need to present NPOV.) (More generally, it is my opinion that when what appears to be a content dispute continues to simmer as long as this one has, it is likely to involve conduct issues that may need to be addressed by ArbCom.)

I ask ArbCom in particular to ask the following questions as to fact:

• Have any of the named parties or other editors engaged in edit-warring, including both slow-motion edit-warring and 3RR violations?
• Have any of the named parties or other editors engaged in personal attacks?

I ask ArbCom in particular to ask the following questions as to remedies:

• Should any of the named parties or other editors be topic-banned from Gun control, broadly defined?
• Should any of the named parties or other editors be site-banned?
• Should Gun control be placed under discretionary sanctions? (I would recommend Yes.)

I ask the ArbCom to look beyond the arguments of the filing party for which the ArbCom should consider this case against other editors and consider whether the filing party is part of the problem and whether BOOMERANG should apply. The filing party, who has gamed the RFC process, is part of the problem, but that is my opinion, and I trust ArbCom to consider the evidence neutrally.

The filing party has, as noted on the talk page, used the Requests for Comments process to try to approve questionable additions to the article, and then civility has broken down. I ask ArbCom to look at the long-standing conduct issues, the recent conduct issues, and whether there has been gaming of the system.

This is exactly the sort of case which only ArbCom can resolve effectively. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:38, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

It appears that the ArbCom will accept this case. I have a few comments to go into the case. I will summarize the events as follows. Other editors will have other views.

The disputants in this case consist of gun-rights advocates, including the filing party, and gun-control advocates. The filing party and other gun-rights advocates posted an article content Request for Comments to add a controversial paragraph (or multiple paragraphs) into the article, linking Nazi gun control measures with the Holocaust. Gun-control advocates, and some neutral editors, consider this linkage to be synthesis amounting to original research. The RFC is still open, as the 30 days have not yet run. The discussions of the RFC led to personal attacks. Two ANI threads were filed concerning the personal attacks. Both were closed with no consensus. (There will never be a consensus about the rightness or wrongness of gun control, and it is hard to reach anything resembling a consensus on how to present the arguments on both sides in NPOV.) However, what those threads do is to illustrate the corrosive nature of the dispute. (It appears that the arbitrators are agreeing that only the ArbCom can deal with the dispute.) Then, while the RFC is still open, the filing party chose to submit this RfAr. The sequence of an RFC, ANI threads, and an RfAr appears to be forum shopping. Based on the wording of the filing party's statement, the filing party appears to be asking the ArbCom to decide a content dispute, by ruling that anyone disagreeing with the controversial position is in denial of the facts or is acting in bad faith. However, sometimes an RfAr should be accepted even if the filing party is forum shopping. The filing party, in my opinion, threw a boomerang. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:07, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

The persistent corrosive nature of this dispute is comparable to that of various regional international disputes (Arab-Israeli, India-Pakistan) that require the draconian measure of WP:Discretionary sanctions to permit uninvolved administrators to impose special remedies. The topic, broadly construed, of gun control, should be placed under discretionary sanctions. The ArbCom is also requested to consider the evidence and impose appropriate remedies, such as topic bans or even site bans, on specific editors. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:07, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Comment by uninvolved user:EdChem

If this case is taken, I suggest that ArbCom examine whether misrepresentation of sources is a problem. I looked at the article and noticed the following sentence in the Nazi section:

Gun rights advocates such as the Democratic Congressman John Dingell NRA (voiced by NRA presidents Charlton Heston and Wayne LaPierre), Stephen Halbrook, and others in the international debate on gun control have argued that these laws were an enabling factor in The Holocaust, that prevented Jews and other victims from implementing an effective resistance, , and have used allusions to the Nazis in the modern gun control debate context.

This statement has two references (44 and 45) for the assertion of international (non-US) gun rights advocates that gun control in Nazi Germany was an enabling factor in the Holocaust. I was very surprised by ref 44 being from Professor Simon Chapman, as I would not expect such a position from him. So, I looked at the source where in a section on p. 221 under a heading 'Hitler tried to disarm the Germans' he notes that the gun lobby have invoked Nazi Germany, but I contend that the section is in no way advocating for gun rights. As an academic, Chapman is acknowledging that an argument has been advanced, citing examples of the position being criticized (and even ridiculed), and not in any way advocating for gun rights. I suggest this is a misrepresentation of the Chapman reference. Note that our article on Chapman describes him as a "key member of the Coalition for Gun Control which won the 1996 Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's Community Human Rights award for its advocacy for gun law reform after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996", so my surprise at a Chapman authored reference being cited for others who have advocated that gun control laws "were an enabling factor in The Holocaust" is justified.

This led me to look at reference 45, though I know little of the arguments in the Canadian context. The source writes (on p. 218): "As had occurred in the 1970s, organizations representing firearm owners made analogies between modern arms control and the policies of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia." This is not a statement from the author advocating gun rights, it is a recognition that arguments were advanced and the overall context does not suggest it is the author's view, nor that the argument is credible. In fact, the only occurrence of the word "Nazi" in the google books preview of pp. 217-219 is in this sentence, and it is not advocating for gun rights.

These two references might support an assertion that a comparison to Nazi Germany has been offered outside the US, though in each case the context of the comments in each reference is (in my view) misrepresented in the gun control article as neither author is advocating gun rights, and neither appears to see the argument as legitimate. If there is a wide-spread problem with misrepresentation of sources in the article, this is a behavioural issue on which ArbCom can act. EdChem (talk) 05:55, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Statement by Jehochman

This appears to be a case about argumentum ad nazium. Please accept. Jehochman 10:04, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Statement by ArtifexMayhem (involved at some level)

Obviously committee decisions are based on the weight of evidence that shows patterns of behavior that are disruptive to the process of building an encyclopedia. In this case many of these patterns are subtle and evidence of their existence will rarely turn on small number of diffs that show reasonably explicit violations of our policies and guidelines. The process of collecting, weighting, and presenting evidence in case of this nature is likely to be tedious and time consuming. As such, I would ask the committee to consider extending the evidence phase of this case from the start. Thank you. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 20:23, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Statement by uninvolved editor Malke2010

Some of the editors listed here are topic banned from the "Tea Party movement, broadly construed." Recently, Xenophrenic asked the Arbs if an article he had edited was included, these are the comments left by arbitrators. This gave me pause since I'd made an edit request on Gun control just today. I realized this article might be part of the 'broadly construed' language since gun control seems to be an issue for at least a few of these tea party groups. It might be a good idea if the Arbs would decide if Gun control is off-limits straight-away. My edit request there was related to grammar and not content per se, and I was going to get a reference from the OED to show why the edit should be made. I'm not going to do that now since I think this article is possibly off-limits and I do not want to violate the ban in any way. Malke 2010 (talk) 20:54, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Statement by FiachraByrne (recently and tangentially involved editor)

I have no opinion at this point on any possible editor conduct issues arising from this case.

In terms of policy, I'm not sure that all those raised in the case request merit much examination by this committee.

WP:FRINGE is defined by the relationship of a given work, interpretation or idea to the relevant academic mainstream and not to its "truth" status.

The opinion that because a given historical interpretation references "facts" - undisputed or otherwise - it is not fringe is to misunderstand that such a historical interpretation may also be fringe because of the decontextualisation of those facts, elision of other relevant factors, lack of engagement with the scholarly secondary literature (which may offer more robust interpretations) and, of course, distance from the academic mainstream.

The thesis that gun control was significant to the Holocaust is undoubtedly fringe. This is so as the thesis has no presence whatsoever within mainstream Holocaust studies (no mention, citation, review or rebuttal at all) - a fact which the most significant proponent of the thesis, Stephen Halbrook, readily concedes. In this instance, the "fringeness" of the Nazi gun control thesis is established by its absence in the relevant (expert) reliable sources.

Likewise, those who rebut his thesis have no expertise in the history of Nazi Germany and we essentially have a species of "law office" history which seeks to instrumentalise the past, in the context of a US domestic debate on the merits and demerits of gun control, to serve present-day, partisan, political goals. Even if invoke WP:PARITY, as no experts on the Holocaust have engaged in this debate there is a significant problem of how to properly contextualise this thesis and relate its status to mainstream historical narratives and analysis.

WP:OR relates to article content, not to the research of sources necessary to usefully edit a topic; to comply with WP policy and guidelines it is necessary to evaluate the quality and relevance of sources prior to editing - including evaluating whether they are fringe or not.

The last point of potential policy relates to the purported systemic bias of the article and notability of the thesis. These questions are complicated by a certain degree of confusion/disagreement over the article subject and whether it is in fact a point of view fork of Gun politics in the United States. A solution to this problem has been suggested on the article talk page which might be quite workable (that is, that the subject of the article should be largely the US gun control debate post-1963 when the issue became increasingly politicised in the US). FiachraByrne (talk) 04:01, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Procedural note

There was a longstanding RFC on the talk page, Talk:Gun control#Authoritarianism and gun control RFC, which I've closed procedurally. I copy my rationale from there:

Coming here in response to a closure request at WP:AN. I'm closing this procedurally because this topic is now the subject of an arbitration case, Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gun control. I doubt that anyone would benefit from this RFC being closed either as "yes" or as "no" in the current climate, since it might well disrupt the arbitration case. Should the arbitrators indicate that they're okay with it being closed substantively (i.e. as yes or no), I'll happily come back, either to close it substantively or to un-close it so someone else can close it substantively.

Should arbitrators or clerks wish for a substantive closure, just let me know; if this is deemed a good decision, or if nobody discusses it at all, there's no need to notify me. Nyttend (talk) 02:43, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Is there a way to get the Nazi material removed from that article until the ArbCom is concluded? Lightbreather (talk) 19:36, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Nope, because ArbCom doesn't directly make content decisions.  Roger Davies 13:44, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Nyttend, that's a good way of dealing with it. It might be good if one of the clerks added a link to the RFC on the evidence page.  Roger Davies 13:44, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Not sure where to put this

I suppose it's too late to do this, and I'm not sure this is where one would propose it anyway, but 1. Considering his proposals on the Gun control talk page and 2. His subsequent work to push Nazi material into the related Gun politics in the United States (documented here; FYI, I've asked for a 3O on it), I think Anythingyouwant should be named as an involved party in this ArbCom. Lightbreather (talk) 19:33, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

The best place to put it would probably be in a request for a new case, seeing as how the material in question was in the US article before the general gun control case was opened (i.e. everyone could have brought it up much earlier in this case than now). Not that I want there to be a new case, but you can surely request it. Beware the boomerang though.Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:46, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Possibly, but let's be clear, the Gun politics in the U.S. article mentioned the Holocaust and Nazis NOWHERE in the body of the article prior to Jan. 3. There was ONE reference to Nazis in a footnote - about as much weight the material was due without serious discussion and consensus. Then, between Jan. 3 (when Gun control was edit protected) and Jan. 6 (when this ArbCom was started), and while you were involved in the Gun control article Nazi content dispute, you pushed added PARAGRAPHS of Nazi content into the article and NUMEROUS Nazi references. Lightbreather (talk) 22:11, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

No pushing was involved.Anythingyouwant (talk) 22:21, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

I have no objection to adding Anythingyouwant as a party; it might be an idea to add Hipocrite too as there are remedies proposed concerning him on the workshop page. I must stress that being added as a party is not a presumption of guilt, or a pointed finger; it's simply a means of formally notifying people who are alluded too on case pages that they have stuff they may need to respond too.

Clerks: before actioning anything here, can you please wait to see what Seraphimblade has to say as I'm hours ahead of him, time-zone wide. Thanks,  Roger Davies 13:24, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Roger, including echoing that adding someone as a party is not a finding of wrongdoing or an intent to sanction them, it's just to let them know they should monitor and if desired respond to proposals that might mention them. Seraphimblade 15:45, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

I have already maxed out on evidence, and the evidence period is closed, so I am confused about how I would respond to what anyone might say about me. I definitely don't want to be an involved party (as my experience with Arbcom has been rather nightmarish), and I stopped editing the gun control article last year with no plans to resume. Other editors as well as myself have had continuing problems with Lightbreather at a related article Gun politics in the United States, so it would be especially odd for me but not Lightbreather to be an involved party. Again, I point out that all the material in the US article that Lightbreather objects to was in the article before this case opened, so LB had ample time to raise this throughout the evidence phase. Of course, ArbCom may do what it wants, but I'm not sure that I will be able to participate.

Incidentally I began editing the US gun politics article at the suggestion of yet another editor who is not an involved party in this case, so I urge you to make that other editor (User:FiachraByrne) an involved party to this case if you want to extend its scope by adding me and Lightbreather. I am not aware that the US gun politics article has recently been full-protected or even semi-protected, so I'm not sure there is any need for Arbcom to calm the waters there.Anythingyouwant (talk) 17:11, 2 February 2014 (UTC)