As a reminder, you recently said &#x27; Every time I get sucked into a political discussion on HN I hate myself so I am as guilty as anyone else&#x27; at participating in the non-tech threads you think should be banned from HN. ;)<p>Quoting from Wikipedia, &quot;Gun control generally refers to laws or policies that regulate the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification, or use of firearms.&quot; This is general agreement with how others use.<p>For example, this more policy-oriented survey of small gun laws in different countries ( <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.smallarmssurvey.org&#x2F;fileadmin&#x2F;docs&#x2F;A-Yearbook&#x2F;2011&#x2F;en&#x2F;Small-Arms-Survey-2011-Chapter-09-EN.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.smallarmssurvey.org&#x2F;fileadmin&#x2F;docs&#x2F;A-Yearbook&#x2F;201...</a> ) breaks the regulations down into:<p>&gt; &quot;how states regulate the firearm ... what types of firearms civilians may be authorized to possess and which states keep centralized records of firearms in civilian hands&quot;, &quot;how states regulate the civilian user, including the criteria used to determine eligibility to possess a firearm, how the licensing process works, and whether states permit private sales of firearms&quot;, and &quot;how states regulate the 
use of civilian firearms, including the extent to which states require a reason to possess a firearm and the conditions that apply to firearm ownership.&quot;<p>I see nothing particularly ambiguous in how the term is used for you to call for a need for the us, the hoi polloi, to help you understand it better.<p>Gun control laws fall on a spectrum. Typically people say &quot;we need more gun control&quot; to mean that the laws should be more restrictive on what is allowed, while &quot;we need less gun control&quot; means the laws should less restrictive.<p>Wikipedia explains the phrase &quot;elephant in the room&quot; well:<p>&gt; The term refers to a question, problem, solution, or controversial issue which is obvious to everyone who knows about the situation, but which is deliberately ignored because to do otherwise would cause great embarrassment, or trigger arguments or is simply taboo. The idiom can imply a value judgment that the issue ought to be discussed openly, or it can simply be an acknowledgment that the issue is there and not going to go away by itself.<p>&gt; The term is often used to describe an issue that involves a social taboo, such as race, religion, or even suicide. This idiomatic phrase is applicable when a subject is emotionally charged; and the people who might have spoken up decide that it is probably best avoided.[8]<p>The phrase &quot;Gun control is the elephant in this particular room&quot; refers to the top-comment&#x27;s list of &quot;tangentially relevant facts&quot;. One inference is that the stricter gun control laws of Germany mean that fewer people have guns, so police are less likely to use methods which presume the civilians are both armed and likely to response with a gunfight.<p>However, saying that directly brings in well-worn nearly deadlocked arguments about changes to gun control laws, Second Amendment, etc. Hence, the top-comment&#x27;s indirect reference, which avoids discussing gun laws by talking about possible effects - hence, the topic of gun control is &quot;the elephant in the room&quot; that is being avoided, for reasons Wikipedia illuminated.<p>Note that &quot;I am simply asking a question.&quot; is often used by people who are derisively said to be &quot;JAQing off&quot;. In order to avoid that accusation, I suggest you do some research first, rather than ask Wikipedia-level questions. You say that people do not define it; what is wrong with the definition from Wikipedia? Is it incompatible with how most people use the term?