It's not strictly a tangent. The GP pointed out that the tactic being tried here is "tried and true" and well understood by many. Although the GP should have gone further and said that we should all be against such tactics regardless of which side of any issue we should find ourselves on. It's a very underhanded, anti-democratic scheme.

I've also seen guns and gun control discussed many times on HN without flames. So I'm not quite sure it qualifies as a "classic flamewar topic" on HN even if it qualifies as such among the general population. I would also argue that the GP did, in a sense, have something new to say about it.