Its a zoo there. Its a shame too.
Read that forum for several days and its more evident as to why its taken so long for CA to turn the corner to being 2A tolerant.
I beg a 1-post indulgence from the moderators - and if you think that undeserved, or off-topic for the site, I understand.
Calguns is overtly political.
The other, national forums where I am a member generally are not.
We cannot afford to reject allies, so quite a few things are tolerated there which are far too extreme for THR or TFL.
Calguns vBulletin stats show
Members: 189,915, Active Members: 26,617
THR shows
Members: 198,307, Active Members: 8,048
TFL shows
Members: 138,543, Active Members: 4,885
An 'active member' is apparently one who has posted in the last 30 days.
Calguns, primarily with California-domiciled members, has over twice the active members the other two relatively 'serious' sites have, combined.
Suppose we accept the statistic that 35% of households have guns, and that the number is accurate for every state. Suppose that each member at each site, ignoring duplicates, represents one household. (Unlikely to be true, but simpler to discuss.)
The United States, in the
Census Quickfacts, has US total households at about 115 million. 35% of that is about 40 million households we might expect would have a gun. THR's active members are 8,000 of 40 million.
California has 12.4 million households; 12.4 x 35% is 4.34 million households which might be expected to have a gun. Calguns active members are 26,617 of 4.34 million.
That's about 6/10 of 1% of the expected gun owning households. I think we've had a lot of influence for that little capture of the population. But until we get up to 400,000 or so active members - around 10% of the households we need to reach - we really need to be a 'Big Tent'.
That said, without getting into too much detail, there are around 40,000 accounts whose behavior even
we couldn't stand.
Each site is appealing to a different audience; frankly, I like it here - it's like a vacation.
But it's always good to get home.