Is civility possible in a forum that allows anonymous posting?

...then I'm guessing Jay pulls out his gun and yells for the "crazed loner" to drop his weapon before blowing him away, right?

...or would he actually fire first when he sees the "crazed loner" firing? Only, he finds out later he killed the undercover cop/security guard/armed citizen who he didn't see/hear identify himself and *that* person was actually firing at the real "crazed loner".

...OR after dropping the "crazed loner", some other cop/guard/armed citizen kills Jay because he doesn't see/hear Jay identify himself...just sees him firing away as the crowd is running the other way.

...OR hey, any one of these armed people doesn't hit their target and ends up putting a round or two into an innocent bystander.

This isn't the Wild West and the good guys don't always wear white hats. This isn't the woods where the deer stand alone and you can't misidentify them very easily.

One or two gunmen in the entire U.S. have killed less than a dozen people in the past few days. To say that you can't go to any other mall without feeling unsafe as an unarmed citizen is absurd. It's like wearing a parachute to fly commercial jets because every now and then one of them has a safety failure and you could have jumped out if only you'd had your parachute on...except it's worse than that, because even if you had your parachute on, someone else isn't going to injure you just because they also decided to have their parachute on (or it's their job to have a parachute).

Every gun owner who shoots at the range and takes a few classes thinks they know everything there is to discharging their firearm in a high-pressure, crowded situation...so if that day ever comes, they're damn sure they're going to be armed and ready. Hell, there are guys in active military duty who aren't even properly trained in firing in highly public areas. You're willing to trust your kids with this guy as he draws and fires in a shopping mall, but the majority of the rest of us aren't...and we shouldn't have to put up with his abrogation of the mall's rules just because he needs to feel safe or prove himself.

I tend to disagree with you there. Gun violence simply begets more gun violence.

If I were running a list or blog, I would not allow anonymous posting. This isn't a tip line or whistle-blower report where anonymity is needed. Responsibility for one's words and actions used to be part of our lives. I wish it still was.

Consider that his blog actually calls himself a "gun nut". Consider that his opening image is a clip-fed rifle. Consider that he acts as if he's "marooned", "stuck", carries a "bad attitude" and that he is "ranting and raving". Consider that the rest of us must be communists since he's trapped here in the "volksrepublik" keeping him hostage under a "perpetual nanny".

Consider all of those contextual clues the rest of us have been given by Jay (we don't even have to go out of our way to incorrectly assume these things!). Now, given the great mound of context, insinuation, and false attribution he places on the rest of us...I think most of these responses were pretty valid.

is that a couple of guys keep posting here as if their next OK Corral shootout is hours away and potentially anywhere, and thus they have to be ready.

It is too easy, without "knowing Jay" to think, from what he wrote, that he is just hoping and praying for an opportunity to show his gunman prowess and be a hero.

So I'll own up to the Red Ryder comments, and add that it was "just a parody" of the juvenile tone evinced by the original posting.

I don't mind logging in to say it either - except that I can't always get to from our work system.

If I log in, registered as 'mocha-polka-dots', would that make my comments more legitimate?

I suppose I could do that, but I'd still essentially be Anonymous.

Give me a break. I don't doubt the veracity of your claim to be a Mr. James Shawn Sullivan, but really what do I know from dirt that a Mr. James Shawn Sullivan is even a real person?

The internet is anonymous by default. Unless you have some level of fame/infamy AND part of that stems from your online activities, then how is anyone else to know that you are who you say you are? Wikipedia is anonymous if you want it to be. IPs are assigned the blame of problems and things. The only thing an account does is localize accountability...but it does nothing to start civility/etc. It's the overt policing of IP bans and timeouts that actually keeps things civil (and even then, people will go out of their way to avoid those things too). Leave it alone unless you want to deal with all the extra policing that goes with it or you want to make it so restrictive to comment that you quash all discussion to the 3 people interested enough in commenting that they sign up, etc...and even then, you won't know that they are who they say they are.

My name is Jason Whitman Forrester. Believe me?

You shouldn't. I totally made it up just now...or did I?