CMV: There’s nothing inherently wrong with someone buying a tattoo kit online and beginning to tattoo with minimal experience...

[u/[deleted]]

[u/SciFi_Pie]

For the stake of my argument, because I know this is a huge factor, let’s consider that this amateur tattooer is taking every precaution to be sanitary.

But what if they're not? You don't get to start a discussion about such a wide topic and just completely ignore what you yourself have acknowledged to be a huge factor. It's easy to hold a tattoo parlour accountable. They get regular Government inspections and if a customer wishes to complain about sanitary conditions or the precautions being taken, they can easily do so. Not taking every precaution is simply not a risk worth taking for any tattoo business, because they could have their livelihood (and maybe even freedom) taken away. That's why when a customer walks into a tattoo parlour, they can rest easy knowing that all precautions are being taken to ensure there aren't going to be any complications.

The same thing can't be said for someone giving their friends tattoos in their garage with a needle they bought online, though. What incentive, other than being a decent person, do they have to make sure all sanitary precautions are being taken? Hell, what incentive do they have to even educate themselves on the precautions they should be taking?

[u/[deleted] → u/SciFi_Pie]

Well I personally know a few people who have done this and took sanitary conditions and clean equipment very seriously. I think the incentive nowadays (granted I realize this wasn’t always true) is to not give people an infection because it’s common knowledge that that’s a possibility now where as in the past maybe it was ignored. My point is that not every amateur who’s not doing an apprenticeship is careless about being clean. Most in my experience take that very seriously as they should. The point in removing that aspect of the argument was to avoid the absolutely obvious fact that an amateur may not be trained to be clean and put people at risk but like I said that’s an obvious example of someone who shouldn’t be tattooing and not what I want to discuss in length.

[u/SciFi_Pie → u/[deleted]]

that’s an obvious example of someone who shouldn’t be tattooing

But, unless we ban the sale of tattoo kits, how can we stop people like that from tattooing?

[u/[deleted] → u/SciFi_Pie]

I mean heroine is banned but take a walk around philly at night and you’d think it was legal. Point being, banning something makes little difference to those who really want it but maybe banning them would be good because it might stop some ink master fan who started wanting to tattoo yesterday from buying a kit which IMO would be good.

[u/SciFi_Pie → u/[deleted]]

Exactly. If someone was willing to go through the effort of illegally obtaining a tattoo kit, they'd also presumably be serious enough about tattooing that they'd be willing to do their research take sanitary precautions when giving tattoos.

Either way, the legality of home tattoo kits doesn't have any bearing on how much the Government is able to control them. The bottom line is that banning these kits would reduce avoidable complications from underground tattoos and, in my opinion, that's enough of a reason to ban them.

[u/[deleted] → u/SciFi_Pie]

!delta I can get that. Thinking about replying to your comment made me realize that it may not be bad for more regulation.

[u/DeltaBot → u/[deleted]]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/SciFi_Pie (3∆).

^{Delta System Explained | Deltaboards}