Has it really come to this? Do we have Americans who believe that the problem is that we don’t carry guns in church? Or as some others have told me we need guns to protect ourselves… from whom, other people with guns? Hey, I’m not for a total ban on guns, but do we want to head toward each street corner being an OK corral zone where the good guys and bad guys shoot it out?
If you seriously believe that you not only need a gun, but need to carry one with you, then you also must believe that we live in a failed society that has regressed to the 18th century and before.
What they hell is wrong with us? And have you ever noticed that in the case of hate killings, the white perpetrators who look down on and belittle minorities are, in fact, mostly uneducated, losers who are actually the ones who should be looked down on? The irony is they believe they are better than others when they are often the dregs of society….who find their equality in a gun which they can obtain like candy in the corner store😰
NRA board member Charles Cotton blamed Clementa Pinckney, a victim of the shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, for his own death. He also blamed Pinckney, the pastor of Emanuel AME and a state senator, for the deaths of the other eight people killed.
As a state senator, Pinckney supported tougher gun regulations and opposed a bill that would have allowed people to carry concealed guns in churches. On TexasCHLForum.com, a message board, Cotton wrote that “Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead. Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue.”
via NRA Board Member Blames Charleston Victim For His Own Death | ThinkProgress.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
If you want to study up on the 2nd Amendment, here are two legal analyses I would recommend:
http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1858&context=facpub
http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/common.htm
But, no, sorry. The 2nd amendment analysis, most recently by the Supreme Court just a couple years ago in Heller, confirms that the Constitution ALWAYS was structured that the right to keep and bear arms was an INDIVIDUAL right – not a collective right, and not limited to a functioning militia. Had you looked back to the origins of the 2nd amendment, you would have noted comparable rights were adopted by many of the states. Remember also the 10th Amendment, that states were more of a confederation and not a national government when the Constitution was organized and the bill of rights was created. The states did not want to cede too much power to the federal government, hence, the Bill of Rights which limits what the federal or national government can do (but does not so limit the states, themselves).
Contemporary debates about the meaning of the Second Amendment— is it a collective right or an individual right, is it limited to militia activities – would have been incomprehensible to those who wrote the Constitution, and those who drafted the Bill of Rights (the compromise, clarifying the limits on federal government beyond the 10th Amendments limitation to the enumerated powers). Prior to the Constitution, all agreed at the time that the federal government had no power to infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. The 2nd Amendment codified that. Remember, the 2nd Amendment says what the federal government CANNOT do. By confirming it is an individual right, a future decision might confirm (or may not confirm) that a state could ban all/any gun if it wanted to – as the 2nd Amendment does NOT affect any state’s rights.
Simply, when the 2nd Amendment was added, it was common knowledge that the right to self-defense and to the means of defending oneself was a basic natural right that grows out of the right to life. The Second Amendment therefore does not grant the people a new right; it merely recognizes an inalienable natural right to self-defense – and the 2nd Amendment confirms that that right cannot be infringed upon by the federal or national government.
Bottom line. If you want to limit the 2nd Amendment to link it to the militia concept, or today’s national guard concept, you need to amend the constitution.
However, the mass shootings seem to be more a result of failure to deal with mental illness than gun control. My understanding is that this individual received his gun as a gift from his father. The guy in Connecticut took his mother’s weapon(s), killed her, then attacked the school. Just what gun control laws do you think will be effective – remember that the guy in Colorado who killed many in a theatre passed a gun purchase background check, so did Mr. Cho at Virginia Tech, and so did Jared Loughner (sp?) in Arizona – which is remarkable since all three were clearly crazy … but, none of them had made their way through the judicial system or been committed – so none were on the list.
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Sorry now I see what happened. My reply is in another post.
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Why are we so different from other countries such as England where they accept a ban on handguns with little fanfare. My friends in England think we are nuts on this issue.
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I am always surprised to hear from people in England who are opposed to gun ownership. They often forget their own history when in War World II they advertised in American newspapers and magazines for private gun owners to send their personal guns to England for the Home Guard which was to defend England after the battle of Dunkirk in 1940. England had outlawed most guns in 1934. American sent thousands of private firearms to England with 7,000 being shipped by the NRA.
In contrast, Switzerland on the other hand requires military rifles be kept in the home. Invasions of Switzerland have not been too successful that I know of to date.
It is true that I have an American view on these things. I heard this during my time I was in England while in the Air Force defending America by keeping Europe stable because they could not do it themselves.
But getting back on topic, I am only hearing this week that racism was involved in Charleston. Some of the world’s corporations understands this since they have been sued over racism for decades but not all the politicians get it, they think it only guns.
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There is no need for exhaustive analysis of comments by the NRA. The NRA exists only to help gun manufacturers sell more guns. Anything and everything they say is to further that single goal. End of conversation.
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As a NRA member I do not support Cotton’s comments.
The shooting in Charleston, South Carolina is about racism, not guns.
However the politicians are using this event to take away my rights to own a gun. I am saddened by the events in Charleston but the Democratic Party and the media has missed the true meaning of the events. The issue is not about guns but racism. If the killings were not done by a gun, a bomb would have been used like in the church bombings of the 1960’s. The method doesn’t change the facts that it was the result of racism. As you put in your post, it is the uneducated losers of society that do these acts.
As sad as it may be, hatred is a protected right but I do not see the media or the Democratic trying to take away my 1st Amendment Rights only trying to take away my 2nd Amendment Rights as a result of an act by a mad man who is willing to commit murder which is an illegal act.
What the media and the Democratic Party and the NRA should be talking about is racism and discrimination. Discrimination is illegal and that took a civil war and the 15th Amendment to make that illegal.
With all the racial police shootings who are trained by our government one would think that the anger would be to re-closing the racial divide. It is the government that promotes racism because of the continuous reporting of race statistics in the effort to help one race over another race instead of helping all Americans. It is the Justice Department that reports certain races have a higher rate in one particular crime or another or certain foreign nationals smuggle in certain illegal drugs; then the Justice department is upset when the police get high conviction rates on these minorities and scream racism.
At times it seems that we have gone full circle. To stop racism we need to educate people not instilling hatred. The education needs to be done in schools, in church, and in the home. I do not think we need free college to that and taking away guns will not stop the hatred or the killings. Ropes were used for centuries.
The event that happened in Charleston should not be about taking away one right over another but how society has failed to deal with racism since our country’s founding. As much as I hate being “politically correct” the use of social media just promotes racism and hatred and the rise of ISIS to those who seek it out and there will be those who seek it out.
Our efforts should be to educate all Americans to accept diversity rather than taking away our 1st or 2nd Amendment rights and point out that the 15th Amendment bars racism. Hopefully I just didn’t added another trillion dollars to the federal budget.
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This is fine as far as it goes, but there are many shootings not involving racism too. I own a gun which I have had since I was 14. It hasn’t been fired in twenty years. What I don’t understand is the apparent obsession over the “right” to own a gun. That comes from the 18th century in a totally different time and I still maintain the Constitution is talking about what today would be our National Guard.
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You are absolutely right, Mr. Quinn. Reich-Wing racists hiding behind the 2nd amendment have no proper place in our society.
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