I genuinely hope there is a special place in hell for the sort of people who commit acts such as the one we saw in Charleston, South Carolina. The brutal and cowardly massacre of nine persons in church by, apparently, some loser with a bizarre racial grievance or on psychotropic drugs is an outrage to everything we all should believe in and stand for.
Yes, he's a loser. Yes, it was brutal and cowardly. Probably as important, I would suggest, is the fact that he's mentally unstable. He should have been institutionalized and he should never have had access to guns. Where was his dad in this whole process? Giving him a gun for his 21st birthday? Really? And now our President is calling again for gun control (people control in disguise). Let's start by locking up both the son and the father.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, every community has individuals like this man. The key lies in identifying them and making sure that they do not have the ability to cause mayhem. As much as I am in favour of liberal guns law; it is very hard to argue against a rigorous licensing system that, as far as is possible, at least seeks to filter out the unstable / or untrustworthy among us.
ReplyDeleteActually, it is very easy to argue against that. Lone nutters simply cannot kill the fractions of a population that an organization can.
DeleteAbsent new innovations in poor child rearing and recreational drug use, we do not produce a high enough rate of that specific kind of crazy.
Look at Baltimore. All that stuff the left says about not being in the business of burning down minority neighborhoods is wrong. Essentially, the Democrats did the same thing as they did in Tulsa in 1921 once they'd piled on enough new falsehoods to convince their base.
History tells us that disarmed ethnic and especially language minorities in empires get mistreated or killed. This only insurance that might protect America's minorities is arms, and the only way to ensure they are armed is to ensure everyone is armed.
This is one reason I am strongly opposed to any form of internal arms control.
Secondly, our rates of producing these sorts, and keeping them alive and free are higher than they need to be. 1) Opening up the mental health hospitals for 'humanitarian' reasons ended up sending a lot of patients straight to the streets. 2) The 'common wisdom' about the effects of certain substances is neither wise nor founded on a particularly strong knowledge of psychiatry and medicinal chemistry. Stuff like 'harmless panacea' is self impeaching and yet people say it without being mocked into tears. 3) A lot of modern legal philosophy and practice is influenced by the crazy idea that someone who has spent their life being immune to coercion is all of a sudden going to fold.
Anti-Democrat
It is true that lone nutters are fewer in number, and on a statistical basis cause smaller numbers of deaths; but every time they do something like this it the attracts much attention and becomes a lightning rod for the debate in which those who seek abolition of the private right to arms revel, with the assistance of the left media. There is a long game being played against gun ownership and the deaths of ordinary people is the corrosive that is slowly wearing away community support. Your approach means that these types of events will continue; and I would have thought it obvious that it is better for everyone (irrespective of a position on the right to gun ownership) if they don't. Sometimes you have give a little bit to take away the basis on which you are constantly attacked. My point is that dangerous and unstable people shouldn't have an unfettered right to possess guns, and arguing against any attempt to stop them from doing so is a position that I suspect falls flat with general polity. Law abiding people should not have their right to gun ownership restricted because of the actions of nut cases; but it at the least equally true that nobody benefits when the nut cases have weapons left in their hands. I might be wrong however I think that the debate and the right will ultimately be lost unless these types of events are stopped.
DeleteMy position is firstly that a certain amount of it is entirely unpreventable no matter what.
DeleteSecondly, so far as it can be practically reduced, the rate can be most effectively be reduced by putting effort into cleaning up messes the left has made. There are far fewer really crazy people than people fit to own arms. If you lock up, exile, or execute those unfit to own arms, you accomplish exactly the same nominal end, insofar as the law is absolute. (The law can never be absolute, which is part of why absolute prevention is impossible.)
Thirdly, so long as the left is burning down minority neighborhoods, many people outside of them know they cannot afford to give up the arms. People, especially those who remember Jim Crow, are seeing that and telling themselves 'I am next on that chopping block, if I allow it'.
The leftist media has helped sell a bunch of falsehoods about criminality, mental health, child rearing, and drug use. If you know the truth, and look closely at a lot of high profile violent incidents of recent years, you can see how they have been carefully avoiding any mention of details that poke big holes in their narratives.
Anti-Democrat
I agree. But unfortunately Obama and Sharpton do not.
ReplyDeletepmc
Last night, George Will remarked that not even 24 hours had passed and those in elected capacity were "committing sociology". What ever this murderer is--mentally deranged or totally clear minded, all will be known in time. He wanted to start a "civil war" according to those who new him. There is already one on going and it has been started by and maintained by many people well positioned in government and society in general. These people only gain via people like this young killer. They will not succeed though.
ReplyDeleteInstead of a "civil war", America has been embroiled in a culture war for decades and America has lost. This murderer may very well be a product of that loss. We shall see.
If he wanted to start a civil war, he was nuts even if he wasn't clinically insane.
DeleteThere are something like three standard possibilities for these cases. He was a ticking bomb, and only confinement or execution would have prevented it. He was unstable, and the stresses of the political and economic situations on everybody passing to him might've made a difference. He was a wannabe revolutionary, and his decision of whether to kill or to give up and be apathetic might've been influenced by his estimations of instability in his polity.
It is very easy to overestimate the instability in this country right now. Obama does not advance America's interests and cannot be made to do so. This includes measures of civil disorder and unequal protection. What the unwise and emotionally driven do not realize is that there is a like of unused strength that is keeping quiet. The people who value stability can tell that escalating would likely do more harm than Obama may choose to do, are waiting, and hence are not visibly signalling.
Someone who is convinced that they should start a Civil War because they are sure to win are wrong.
I'm not prepared to say that America will lose the internal culture war.
Anti-Democrat
I've had to deal with students that age who have started to exhibit the symptoms of schizophrenia. It's bad enough seeing the poor sods go mad; it's enough to make you weep to see their parents' pain.
ReplyDeleteIf (I say if) that was the case here, then giving a gun to the fellow was wicked.
I have a few thoughts on this as both a citizen and a Christian.
ReplyDeleteWho in his right mind would ever expect that someone might walk into a church's midweek meeting, sit calmly in one of the pews, then all of a sudden pull out a gun and start shooting people? I can't say that "arm the deacons!" is a solution. After all, a church should be a welcoming place, even if it exposes and challenges people's sins; and gun-toting folks at the door don't send that message.
And as for Mr. roof walking into a black church, well, there're whites who worship in majority black churches, blacks who worship in majority white churches, and numerous "non-ethnics" worshiping with people of another ethnicity. It's part of a pattern that has been going on since Paul informed us that in Jesus Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek.
Of course the Left's certain attempt to turn this into another call for repealing the 2d Amendment is a non-starter. Have Britain's stringent gun control laws (as opposed to mere weariness) put a dint in the IRA? Taiwan (a country I basically like) can get antiques that Yuanzhumin use to shoot nuts and bolts at wild pigs and monkeys raiding the sweet potatoes out of honest poor folks' hands, but somehow now and then sees some urban gang mustering automatic firepower against the police. I'm sure some white supremacist group will bow in humble obedience to new gun control laws and refrain from shooting black people1 [sarc]
Instead of moaning over the country's original sin of racism or the ease with which a maladjusted freak can get his hands on a firearm, maybe we ought to admit that there's such a thing as real moral evil in this world.
And, while we're at it, pray for comfort and healing for the bereaved people in Charleston.