Shootings! Shootings! Shootings! Today's and tomorrow's shootings! — Page 24

* Beltway Snipers, John Allen Muhammad (black American) and Lee Boyd Malvo (black Jamaican)

*Virginia Tech Shooter, Seung-Hui Cho (South Korean)

*Fort Hood Shooter, Nidal Malik Hasen (Palestinian-American)

*Washington Navy Yard Shooter, Aaron Alexis (black American)

I would be the last person to deny the racist motives of the Charleston shooter but encourage everyone to not lose sight of the fact that the perpetrators of gun violence in the USA are overwhelmingly males between the ages of 15 and 35.  It's a male problem with strong ties to our gun culture that's encoded in our national DNA.

@ErikJ972 I'm no constitutional scholar but it's my understanding that the Second Amendment has been in force for nearly 224 years.  In addition to being based partially on the right of FREE MEN to keep and bear arms, it also imposed a civic duty on those FREE MEN compelling them to take up those arms if necessary in defense of the nation.  A well regulated militia then did not mean Halliburton.  It was a real challenge for the colonies first and then a nascent nation to establish a regular army.

I'm at a loss as to what slavery has to do with gun ownership in the context of the Second Amendment in 2015.

Amendment II

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

A very illuminating history of conscription can be found at Chronology of Conscription in the U.S. – Colonial Era to 1999

Updated On: 6/21/15 at 03:51 PM

I hope people read the piece I posted above, here or somewhere. It's critical that we abandon the facile myth that racism will die out with boomers (or worse, boomer parents).  The mythology around youth as enlightened carriers of a new world order is frighteningly out of touch.  Actually, both this piece about millennials and anti-intellectualism are critical analyses of this awful week that (sorry) take us beyond confederate flag petitions.  

Both pieces cited by @Auggie27 really struck a chord with me.

I'm not comfortable singling out the old south, but the virulent anti-intellectualism that I was exposed to early on led to my exodus at the first opportunity.  I struggled immensely with being labeled as stupid by default by a racial majority due to an accident of birth.  And there were simply too many people who looked like me who acted like we were their God's chosen people and that we somehow invented a religion that never really appealed to me.  Clearly those are my issues though which are not germane to the Charleston shooting.

At work, I routinely come into contact with millennials at opposite ends of the socio-economic spectrum.  Never the twain shall meet.  I always thought of them as more of a marketing team construct than anything else.  @Auggie27's second article helped crystallize my views about them in that regard.  I don't knock them per se, but wish a few of them in my ambit would come to terms with the fact that there is no "magic app" that will resolve some longstanding problems that have plagued our nation.  I manage a team of software developers so the statement's not completely frivolous.

The most stunning revelation from this discussion to me has been @PalJoey's assessment of what it would take to repeal the Second Amendment.  It's a bold assertion to put forth that armed conflict would be required to repeal the very constitutional amendment that placed a gun in each of our hands in the first place, figuratively speaking.  Please let there be a peaceful pathway forward.

Auggie I read your stuff.  I don't believe it.  It's going to get better before it gets worse. We continue to grow up albeit slowly.

Also, they have the guns.

He didn't say he was for repeal, he said it was the only way to eliminate it.  Repealing the 2nd amendment dosen't seem to be in the cards any time soon.  Stricter laws are the way to start.

The difference between what Karl Rove is saying and what I'm saying is that Karl Rove agrees with you, South Florida, that it's "preposterous" to think we could eliminate guns in this country because it would mean repealing the 2nd Amendment, which he believes is never going to happen.

I'm saying that it IS going to happoen because it's the only way to eliminate guns in this country. We will do it and when we do, there will be a civil war or large-scale insurrection, because the gun people in this country feel as strongly about the 2nd Amendment as the rest of us do about the 1st.

Stricter laws are the way to start.

Not necessarily. They're not that stupid. Stricter laws only make them madder. They understand that you want to take away their "gun rights" slowly, because it's the same way they're taking away "abortion rights." And so they are as absolutist about not allowing us to chip away at assault weapons as we are about having no restrictions on abortions. 

But unfortunately, we haven't been smart enough about protecting the access for women to safe abortions. And if they have their way, a woman will have to travel from her home state in the South, Midwest or West, hundreds or thousands of miles away, to the East Coast or the West Coast, in order to get an abortion.

And all the time, they will make her watch videos of her mandatory sonogram.

It's not enough to sit around smugly and think "These people are so stupid." We have to be smarter than the stupid people.

Updated On: 6/22/15 at 08:05 AM

It's been my experience that both abortion foes and gun owners in my family attempt to take the moral high ground on both counts.  The gun owners feel that the right to bear arms is an extension of their God-given natural right to self defense, notwithstanding the Second Amendment, and the abortion foes hold up holy scripture as their main guiding principle.  And we'd be remiss if we didn't mention the Army of God in the context of right-wing terror groups.

Details on the Army of God can be found at the Army of God website.  WARNING: It contains very graphic pix of fetuses in trash cans.

In SC, that's a big friggin' deal!

Updated On: 6/22/15 at 02:59 PM

I'm glad she's listening to the hundreds of thousands of people tweeting her and signing petitions.

"It's been my experience that both abortion foes and gun owners in my family attempt to take the moral high ground on both counts."

How do you take the moral high ground on those subjects?

Good debate this. Agree with lots of their views here but PalJoey and Namo do write very well here.

We now have as normal, bullets flying all over, and a "stray" one hit the bus.

That's really insightful.  Bullets are now lost or abandoned dogs with no destination.