Quote:I love how you selectively see what you want to see.

 

Do I blame guns? No. In fact, ask me sometime about my thoughts on gun control, welfare, immigration, education or taxation, and you might see how right of center I am on certain issues. A person who should not have had a gun used one to kill nine people. I repeat: a person who should not have had a gun used one to kill nine people. Is it the gun's fault that it was in the hands of a racist sociopath with a "mission"? No. A gun doesn't kill people without being loaded, pointed at them, and the trigger pulled. In this case, that was a willful act by a true piece of crap of a human being, and the blame lies solely with him, but some responsibility lies with the system that failed to identify him as someone who should not have been able to acquire a gun. Asking what we can do in terms of creating new laws or revisiting and revising ones currently on the books to keep it from happening again is a fair question.

 

Answer me this, and I know it's a "liberal" question. Why is it that America has such a high rate of violent crime involving guns compared to the rest of the first world? If you can't answer that question, then why should sitting around and pointing at existing policies that clearly failed in this case (and many others) as things that shouldn't be revisited a valid response to any of this? Far-left liberals might want your guns, yeah, and attitudes like that aren't going to get us anywhere. Believe it or not, there is middle ground to be had on gun control. Extended waiting periods, medical background checks (I would argue that keeping a gun away from a schizo trumps the right to privacy), limitations on magazine size and number/type of weapons owned, all things that don't eliminate the right to firearms, but do help to limit the ability of people who shouldn't have guns to get them, and can mitigate the body count when the worst does happen.

 

Sometimes I wish some of you right-wingers would go back to look at the original intent of the Second Amendment. The Founding Fathers never envisioned assault rifles with 30-round magazines that fire twice a second. Shoot, they never envisioned pistols small enough to fit four of them with ten-round magazines inside a single trenchcoat. The Second Amendment was written so that states could form and maintain "well-regulated" militas, not so that someone can amass twelve handguns, four shotguns, six rifles and 10,000 rounds of ammunition. Once you take that little detail into account, suddenly the "right to bear arms" is cast in a new light.

 

So do I blame a gun or a stupid flag for the shootings? No, and anyone doing so is either pushing an agenda or being an idiotic parrot. Is it fair to expect that the shootings of nine innocent people by one person who shouldn't have had a gun would stir the national conversation back up? Yes, entirely so, and I hope we get away from this stupid, treasonous flag and back to the issues that matter: respecting the victims first and foremost, and working to figure out how we can reduce the chances of this happening again.

 

Asking what we can do by creating new laws would have done zero in this or many mass shootings in this country.  The problem isn't the laws.  There are more than enough laws on the books in every state to control the sale of guns, and even in this instance, it was a breakdown in the system, and NOT a lack of laws that allowed this guy to obtain a firearm from a dealer.  So, are you suggesting we should make a new law that addresses the state and federal background check system to get it right when it completely whiffed on this guy during that process?  Because there are already laws on the books that SHOULD have prevented him from making that purchase.  That being said, even if the system worked, and the purchase was blocked, this guy would have found a way to obtain a weapon illegally.  In other words, he would have broken a law to get the weapon if his intent (which is obvious after the fact) was to kill blacks in order to outwardly express his hatred.

 

You might want to look at actual statistics on gun violence.  When it comes to incidents like this involving firearms, the US actually ranks well behind quite a few nations, including a few who have far more restrictive gun laws than we already have.  Feel free to dispute the facts.  I actually made sure it was a good liberal publication that was posting these numbers. 

 

While it would be nice for those numbers to be even lower, the reality is that the rate of violent crimes specifically involving firearms isn't even close to the highest.

 

Failed policies wasn't the issue here.  A failed system that didn't catch multiple flags for this particular shooter allowed this guy to get a gun.  The laws, including the one that prevents legal gun owners with concealed carry permits to bring a firearm into a church in SC, did nothing to prevent this guy from doing what he wanted to do, and again, if murder was his intention, no law was going to prevent that from happening.  He would have found a way after planning this for months.  There are already laws on the books keeping guns away from someone who is dealing with a mental illness and who is also medicated, or who has been charged with a felony.  The laws exist.  It wasn't the lack of laws that failed here. 

 

Ah, the assault rifle argument.  You're good for the usual talking points, that's for sure.  Who needs 30 rounds?  Who needs high capacity mags?  We don't want to ban guns!  We just want to limit the number of bullets you can put in one!  Again, this guy reportedly RELOADED FIVE TIMES during the shooting.  There are laws on the books in many states that restrict the size of magazines.  How would that have helped here?  Even if he had a 7 round mag, he reloaded FIVE TIMES.  That's still 35 rounds of ammunition.  You get that, right?  He didn't use an assault rifle,  He didn't use a high capacity magazine.  So, your talking  points are meaningless. 

 

Evidently, someone has a very different interpretation of the 2nd Amendment from you.  This has been challenged multiple times, and your viewpoint always ends up on the losing end of the argument.  Keep trying though!  Eventually those talking points will really get you somewhere I'm sure!

 

I don't really care about the flag issue.  It's nothing more than a distraction orchestrated by the usual suspects.  I do agree that we need to get back to the real issue here, which is the fact that the laws on the books were not properly applied in this instance.  Somewhere along the way, the mandated background checks failed to pick up what should have been blatantly obvious flags.  That will need to be addressed.  But, that doesn't require any more laws. 

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