No it wasn’t. It was that secession was treasonous and was therefore an act of war against the Union.
Oh, yes, I forgot – slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War. The South just wanted to leave and the North didn’t want them to do so. It had nothing to do with the South wanting to preserve their stolen wealth built off of exploitation. Wow, I feel so dumb right now.
There were also many in the North who were willing to accept slavery as the price of union in 1861. On the question of who fired the first shot, a) if one accepts the legality of secession, surely the state of South Carolina is not required to allow a foreign power to maintain a military base within its waters and b) are you really so naive as to believe that, in any event, Lincoln would not have found some other pretense to invade?
I was under the impression the shots that they were referring to at the beginning of the post were the shots fired into the AME church, not at Ft Sumter. Maybe I misunderstood.
“if one accepts the legality of secession, surely the state of South Carolina is not required to allow a foreign power to maintain a military base within its waters and b) are you really so naive as to believe that, in any event, Lincoln would not have found some other pretense to invade?”
What do you mean by, “if one accepts the legality of secession”? Who would that be?
I don’t know anyone who accepts that who knows history. More revisionist history.
RE post #172
I can’t speak for other situations but will try to address the two recent mass shootings in my state and the neighboring state. In none of these cases were the targets chosen because they would be “soft” and unarmed. In fact, suicidal shooters generally aren’t concerned if there might be people in the area who are carrying as they don’t intend to live through the incident.
The Oregon shooting was a home access issue and could also be tied to “gun culture”. The shooter used his brother’s AR-15 which was stored under the bed. They were a family who hunted and the kid was in a union military organization. He would not have been stopped sooner had people at school been packing but the shooing might have been prevented had he not lived in a house that was quite literally strewn with weapons. He took others as well but used the military grade weapon.
QUOTE:
Anderson said Padgett opened fire with an AR-15-style rifle and also was carrying a semiautomatic handgun that he did not use, as well as a large knife and nine loaded ammunition magazines with a capacity for several hundred rounds.
The youth arrived at the school on Tuesday morning by school bus, carrying a guitar case and a duffel bag. When confronted in the locker room by the teacher, the boy wore a vest used for carrying ammunition and other items and a camouflage-colored athletic helmet, Anderson said.
“The shooter obtained the weapons from his family home,” the chief said.
The Washington State cafeteria shooting was carried out with a weapon that the teen’s dad purchased at Cabelas. Due to unfortunate tension (not sure who is to blame and both parties point fingers) the tribal legal system is not able to upload records into the state and federal data bases so the dad’s domestic violence record and protection order did not prevent him from purchasing weapons off the reservation. It is nearly impossible that any adult in the cafeteria could have stopped him with a fire arm before he shot his intended targets at his table group.
The Seattle Pacific shooter fell through a mental health loop hole on the gun laws where he was known to be mentally ill and it was suggested that weapons be removed from the home and yet he had access. He was stopped by an unarmed bystander.
I did not say that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War. Without secession, there clearly would have been no Civil War. But the North said (initially at least) that they were not fighting over slavery.
I doesn’t matter to this discussion what the North thought - it is about what the South did and why and how that flows to the meaning of the Confederate Flag. But the North did not invade the South due to their opposition to state’s rights or start the war. Secession was treasonous and considered an act of war against the Union.
I saw your earlier post and decided to give people time to answer. Well, I guess they answered you.
Anyway, here is the response I was going to write this morning:
The person who has the structure of the gun control law, which would or might have prevented this shooting in Charleston is also the person who has found the formula to prevent drunk drivers from killing people. Why? Because something like 50% of drunk drivers who kill someone are driving on a suspended or revoked license, i.e., no permission to drive, so they are already illegal - in my county at least - bet it is the same for the country. Yet, these drunk drivers have no problem getting hold of a car to drive, either by a friend, a family member, or by taking a vehicle without someone knowing.
But, of course, it is silly to think that a law would help. The person has a disease, and diseases do not follow laws, they do whatever to sustain themselves.
Same here is Charleston. There is nothing amenable about Roof with regards to civil society. He was on the fringe, or really, outside of civil society. Thus, laws of civil society are irrelevant to governing his actions, will not be followed, and one way or another he was going kill.
Re drunk driving, short of locking all potential drunk drivers up, even if they are not drunk yet, there is virtually no way to eliminate a driver who is drunk or about to become drunk from driving a car. No law would help.
Same as with mass murderers, unless we lock up who we think are crazy, who writes a manifesto ala Roof, or who says vile things about others, then there is no law that will stop them from perpetrating violence, with a gun or otherwise.
The real problem with these discussions on CC is many posters totally seem not to comprehend that laws are for members of civil society who follow said laws. However, people who commit heinous acts and criminals in general are not members of civil society, and thus all the laws in the world do not affect their ultimate actions. Pretty much another gun law is like thinking that we can stop drunk drivers from getting behind the wheel. Ain’t gonna happen.
The more fundamental issue though is many posters on CC do not want to accept that there is a price for liberty. and some of that price is not pretty, but necessary to maintain the larger objective.
Ben Franklin said it best, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
I do not know if this is accurate or not, but even if it is, it misses a crucial aspect - mass shooters specifically choose places that are known or advertise, as gun-free zones.
It is irrelevant the number of guns in a state, as it just takes one gun and one crazo, so it is stupid bumper sticker statement and stat for the low information crowd.
They do not specifically choose “gun free zones”. The HS shooters in our area specifically chose to make a statement by shooting people who they knew and expected to die in the process. The Marysville Pilchuck cafeteria wasn’t chosen because there would be no other guns but because the shooter could text all his friends and get them to sit around a table together.
I read this in Wikipedia about the confederate flag
As a result of these varying perceptions, there have been a number of political controversies surrounding the use of the Confederate battle flag in Southern state flags, at sporting events, at Southern universities, and on public buildings. In their study of Confederate symbols in the contemporary Southern United States, the Southern political scientists James Michael Martinez, William Donald Richardson, and Ron McNinch-Su write:
The battle flag was never adopted by the Confederate Congress, never flew over any state capitols during the Confederacy, and was never officially used by Confederate veterans’ groups. The flag probably would have been relegated to Civil War museums if it had not been resurrected by the resurgent KKK and used by Southern Dixiecrats during the 1948 presidential election.[42]
Southern historian Gordon Rhea further wrote in 2011 that:
It is no accident that Confederate symbols have been the mainstay of white supremacist organizations, from the Ku Klux Klan to the skinheads. They did not appropriate the Confederate battle flag simply because it was pretty. They picked it because it was the flag of a nation dedicated to their ideals: ‘that the negro is not equal to the white man’. The Confederate flag, we are told, represents heritage, not hate. But why should we celebrate a heritage grounded in hate, a heritage whose self-avowed reason for existence was the exploitation and debasement of a sizeable segment of its population?[43]
Interesting viewpoint and one I never even considered because I did not grow up around people who thought so defenseless and weak.
However, what is even more intriguing is the poster’s position is the cop-out, null and void position, which requires zero effort. The position TRIES nothing and DOES nothing to protect and defend family, kids or others from a killer. Who the heck wants friends like that around them? Maybe many on CC do.
Seriously, instead of even effecting to save lives, the poster decides that because someone friendly MIGHT get shot by a gun of a friendly, then we do nothing and just take getting shot FOR SURE by the perpetrator. Yeah, that’s brilliant.
But, the part I find especially worthy of psychological dissection is the fact that having a plan and choosing to defend self, family, and others from a killer is labeled “grotesque.” That is new one for me too, i.e, self-defense awareness and acceptance of this responsibility for self is a “grotesque.” No, choosing not to help self and others and choosing the path of certain harm is what is truly “grotesque.” That is pure suicidal behavior in the face of identified and certain danger. Who the heck does not fight for life and limb? That is just bizarre thinking, zero self-preservation - therapist time.
This approach though indicates an even more embedded mindset - one of some serious dependency. Dependency on what or whom, I have not a clue. However, I can say that if someone is under assault and he chooses to get harmed instead of taking the most effective way out to save himself and others, then I can only conclude he is depending on someone to do his self-defense for him. Well, good luck with that too. That is the definition of a dead man walking.
Clearly, we are no longer the home of the brave, when members of the citizenry decide to rollover in tough situations without even fighting back. Still cannot wrap my head around someone who thinks his life is not worth fighting back to the utmost. Obviously, this person has decided to denude the the term “self” in self-defense. Darn, defense was denuded, as well.
awcntdb, I think your argument “proves too much,” as lawyers sometimes say. According to your logic, we shouldn’t have laws against drunk driving, either. Or murder, or assault, or anything else. Because apparently they don’t deter people who are going to commit those crimes anyway. Did it occur to you that things would be even worse without those laws?
Banning guns would not help. Possibly finding a way to ban crazy people might!
How can you regard a classroom full of shot-up first graders as the “price of liberty?” So easy to say since they weren’t your kids.
What “essential liberty” is lost if Nancy Lanza were not able to buy a Bushmaster XM of her very own to keep right there in the house with her mentally disturbed son?
The point was that short of banning entirely the sale of guns and then confiscating and destroying all 300 million guns in this country, something that will never happen and wouldn’t be constitutional if it did, criminals will commit crime with guns. 100 million people in this country own guns. A tiny fraction of those people commit crimes with guns. No one on this thread or in any of the articles on ‘gun control’ have any practical notion of some law that based on statistics or even common sense would do anything to stop these mass killings. They are horrific and tragic but fortunately they are rare.
I made the analogy to drunk driving because roughly the same number of people are killed by drunks as are killed by guns in this country. And if gang crime deaths are taken out of the numbers (i.e criminals killing other criminals), more law abiding people are killed by drunk drivers. But drunk drivers kill individually or two or three, not nine or 20 at a time, so they don’t get the headlines. CNN doesn’t run a week of shows on how lax the laws are on drunk driving. But for the families affected the tragedy is just as painful. And of course, politicians can’t get headlines or rally their constituents on drunk driving since driving drunk isn’t a red/blue issue.
That’s a misappropriation of Franklin’s words. He was not talking about civil liberties being ceded to a government, but rather the right of the legislature to provide that safety without giving up it’s duly authorized powers.
There is no practical notion presented because there is not any such law possible.
Karl Rove gave the only answer that might make a small dent in the number of guns:
However, even that will not stop getting assaulted by criminals with guns - in fact, the assault numbers may even increase. Why? Rhetorical question - if the government cannot stop anyone or drugs from coming across the border illegally, how is it going to stop the sure booming black market for guns that will spring up overnight? No, government cannot, and then it will really be true that only the criminals will have guns, assuming people pay attention to the repeal amendment.
But, remember Prohibition? Did not last because people openly defied government. Same would happen here in a major way.
Rove said this for one reason anyway - he knows it won’t happen, and is calling out people who think another law is the magic elixir.
While headline making crimes like this one attract all the attention, in reality in most cities in this country, gang crime accounts for 50 to 90% of the homicides. In LA/Long Beach it’s around 90%. These are criminals who don’t just commit one violent act, they commit violent acts many, many times until they are finally incarcerated.
They don’t register their guns, they buy them out of the back of someone’s trunk. They don’t get fingerprinted or submit to background checks. That’s all just a joke to them.