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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Jun 22, 2015 - 01:08pm PT
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Norton, the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence and the realities of the time were not the same. Do you think our founders could have snapped their fingers and turned it all around in a minute? We have moved steadily in the right direction since those days, to a great extent because of our founding documents.
Many of the founders held slavery to be abhorrent. But they had to have the southern states in the union or they would fail. Many deals were made with the devil to get this country off the ground. We went on to be cleansed by blood of the scourge of slavery. In fits and starts, on step at a time we have arrived where we are today, a black President and a woman running to be next.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Jun 22, 2015 - 01:19pm PT
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I agree with Norton that it took the blood of hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers to free the slaves when we did, and the Constitution's use of the three-fifths formula reprented a compromise the overwhelming majority of free United States males could live with.
Those who disparage religion overlook the strong role religion played in forming the abolitionists' views both in the United States and Great Britain, but the Confederates were certain that God was on their side, too.
While I find the language of the Declaration of Independence and the basic tenets of Christian doctrine both falling squarely on the side of equality of worth and rights for all people, we tend to ignore doctrine when greed gets in the way. Mere reflection doesn't make us behave better. Sometimes it takes force. Here I agree with Kris - if we enforced the existing laws regarding distribution of firearms with the zeal we enforced, say, tax evasion, I don't think we'd need better laws.
Unfortunately, I see over and over again a desire to end bad behavior by passing laws making crime "more illegal." The few economically-focused criminological studies I've seen tend to show that the penalty for misbehavior doesn't matter unless there's a decent likelihood of getting caught and punished in the first place. In the context of Charleston, any penalty Roof faces would have been the same whether he used a gun or his bare hands, but will Roof's parents face any prosecution?
John
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jun 22, 2015 - 01:27pm PT
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Oh, the poor, poor ATF that is legally precluded from maintaining a national gun registry. Oh, oh, oh.
Actually, if legislation to preclude the feds from maintaining a national gun registry is one of the lobbying efforts of the NRA, maybe I SHOULD join the NRA and start sending them money.
The issue of a national gun registry is one of the most divisive aspects of getting a universal background check law passed. And as long as the feds keep trying to conjoin background checks with a gun registry, you'll have vociferous opposition from millions just like me.
Decouple those and ensure by force of law that no federal agency can maintain a "registry" type database, and you'll immediately garner my full support for universal background checks.
It's simple: Try to get greedy and take too much, and you get nothing. Be reasonable and compromise on the really contentious issue, and you'll get the lion's share of what you want.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jun 22, 2015 - 01:49pm PT
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I don't believe any amount of law curtails social behavior.
Look at china, up till 56' they only had 1 law. Now they got less than 300 but they still don't have the crazy crap we see going on in the US. We have craziness for the fact that we have freedom of imagination! Then freedom of speach. Then roll in our modern working family with no one home looking after the kids cept TV and video games and we have a boiling pot for imagination to become action.
When an immature childish brain doesn't like something he throws it down, turns it off, shoots to kill.
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10b4me
Social climber
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Jun 22, 2015 - 01:55pm PT
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God cares for everyone equally.
my understanding is that he really doesn't care for anyone.
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Mick Ryan
Trad climber
The Peaks
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Jun 22, 2015 - 02:13pm PT
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Bit of a shoo-hah over at the Guardian..http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/22/guardian-view-on-confederate-flag-tear-down-this-red-rag-south-carolina-shooting-charleston
I am a 49 y.o. BLACK AMERICAN WOMAN from Dallas, Texas. Displaying the Confederate flag IS RACISM. I have a hard time believing you'd call a swastika a 'piece of cloth', but when it comes to Black people, it's ok to play everything down.
That flag symbolizes slavery. Misery. Terror. That flag reminds me of the oldest ancestor my family can remember, my great-grandmother, who was brought to TEXAS from Virginia, on a wagon train, as a lady's maid in the mid 1800s, as a child. She never saw her parents again; she was sold from them. That flag symbolizes her being F O R C E D to bear the slavemaster's children because his wife couldn't bear any. Today that would be called R A P E. Back then, she was considered property, so no rape was said to have 'occurred'.
That flag symbolizes the 2 half-white daughters she was forced to bear, and then forced to give up, so they could live as 'white'. The daughters died soon afterward; the black daughter was unwanted and became my great-grandmother, who had to raise my mother and her sister, after their mother died in 1940.
That flag symbolized vicious Jim Crow segregation, which both my parents (both past age 75) had to deal with daily; “’we don’t hire colored people here”. Segregated schools, drinking fountains, etc. Being only able to go to the State Fair one day a year – “Negro Achievement Day”. Lynch mobs. ‘Gator bait’ (look it up). Lynch ropes. A bunch of losers who are mad because they LOST!! You lost 150 years ago – GET OVER IT!
That flag symbolizes the stubborn refusal to “give us what you put down on paper” (MLK referring to the Constitution). Lots of people paid for that refusal, like President John Kennedy. In Dallas, Texas.
It’s not just cloth; it’s a racist piece of losers’ crap that needs to be left in a museum. PERIOD.
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Stewart
Trad climber
Courtenay, B.C.
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 22, 2015 - 02:18pm PT
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BLUEBLOCR: I notice that you haven't had enough integrity to take your thumb out of your ass long enough to tell us what Jesus "really" meant in the Sermon on the Mount, since you insist that you're the only person on planet Earth who is capable of understanding this stuff.
Furthermore, I am reeling from your casual support for the 1 TRILLION dollars wasted on the "War on Drugs", not to mention the countless millions of non-violent offenders who have had their lives ruined by this sick legislation.
And I continue to swoon at your intellectually constipated inability to consider the fact that poverty directly contributes to crime rates.
Oh, madbolter: you are still one sick fukwit for claiming that it was partly the victim's fault for getting shot because they weren't packing guns. Perhaps you could take a second to consider that these were CHRISTIANS who actually understood the Sermon on the Mount...
you know the sermon with the line that says "Love thy neighbour".
Isn't it part of your Bill of Rights that guarantees the pursuit of happiness as one of your freedoms? It's a pity that the people who are endlessly baying about their "rights" to personally carry the weapons of death in public had the humanity choose the pursuit of happiness as the focus for their energies instead.
P.S.: BLUEBLOCR, you twisted fraud - are you happy that I spelled your Republican nom de plume correctly this time? Twice.
P.P.S.: great work on cooking the statistics re: gun crime all you NRA types. I'll stick with the American Bar Association for the truth, but even if I conceded the accuracy of your conflicting numbers, it would take a truly shallow human being to deny that gun violence in the U.S. is almost routine. You can't fix what's wrong with other nations, but people of good will sure can do something to repair what's happening on their own soil.
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Jun 22, 2015 - 02:52pm PT
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Dave, point taken. I had no idea they were making ads like that. Stupid.
ATF should have database access. Of course these databases seem to be vulnerable. Also Government agencies are not immune from abusing private information. Caution must be taken on this.
Of course if the Government is in charge of setting up the system it'll cost a billion and wont work anyway :-)
Something like 7 out of 50 states require gun sales at shows to go through a licensed dealer, background check and so forth. CA is one of the 7. The rest should follow.
I still don't think this will do anything re the rage shootings.
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Norton
Social climber
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Jun 22, 2015 - 02:58pm PT
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I still don't think this will do anything re the rage shootings.
what would you recommend then, if anything?
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Stewart
Trad climber
Courtenay, B.C.
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 22, 2015 - 03:24pm PT
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Moosedrool: You are witnessing the best of the U.S. citizenry defending America the Beautiful against a disgusting sample of the low-lifes who will do anything within their power to drag this proud nation into the darkness of an anarchistic murder-filled sewer.
Please direct your friends in Poland and elsewhere to read this thread. Once upon a time I actually tried to reason with these people by pointing out to them that the entire world is disgusted with these endless massacres taking place on U.S. soil, yet not one of these gun fanatics value the rights of individuals to safety above their "right" to possess as many murder machines as they desire.
P.S. Watch out for Rdog - he's not only exceptionally stupid, but he's a pretty good candidate for the next guy to cut loose on a crowd of innocents.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jun 22, 2015 - 03:28pm PT
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Oh, madbolter: you are still one sick fukwit for claiming that it was partly the victim's fault for getting shot because they weren't packing guns. Perhaps you could take a second to consider that these were CHRISTIANS who actually understood the Sermon on the Mount...
More insults and name-calling. Really, dude, would you say such trash to my face?
It's really pathetic that people like you have so cast the TERMS of the "argument" that even stating the FACTS makes one a "sick fukwit."
Is it or is it not a FACT that Pinckney was a state senator?
Is it or is it not a FACT that his voting record shows his sweeping anti-gun, anti-concealed-carry stance?
Is it not a FACT that a law that would have legalized concealed carry in churches was just recently voted down by HIS own senate? (I'm confident that eventually it will come out in the voting records that he did indeed vote against it.)
Is it or is it not a FACT that the churchgoer victims were precluded BY LAW from possessing the very firearms that could have saved their lives and CERTAINLY would have given them at least a fighting chance as sicko reloaded again and again while waiting for the cops to FINALLY show up???
Look, you can massage the facts all you want, but it is FACT that Pinckney's own perspectives DID contribute to the FACT that nobody in his church could defend themselves with the best response, the response the cops themselves used: GUNS!
When somebody assembles a rap anchor wrong and then dies because of it, we don't "blame the victim" in the sense you label me with! But we DO recognize that the victims own perspectives and decisions had a direct, causal relationship to the tragedy. And that is exactly the state of affairs with Pinckney.
By denying the FACTS and labeling anybody who cites them in the most pejorative terms, you attempt to make the FACTS go away and the people that would talk about the facts too afraid to cite the obvious arguments that emerge from the facts.
I don't fall for your labels, your invective, your name-calling, or your attempts to scare me off from stating the facts that we just MIGHT learn something from, if we only had the will to face the FACTS head on.
The FACT is that if even ONE person in that church besides the sicko had a gun and the will to use it, those people would have had a fighting chance that their own government denied them. THAT is WRONG, and their own government should be held accountable for stripping them of the effective employment of their inalienable right of self-defense.
Regarding their Christianity, perhaps YOU could take a second to think about the FACT that most Christians are not pacifists, nor do they interpret the sermon on the mount as you seem to think it should be.
Look, if you think everybody should be a radical pacifist and just take what's coming to 'em, because, after all, all outcomes are God's will (or some such ridiculous nonsense), then YOU have no business wringing your hands for these people. They were not victims, and there was no tragedy! Everything played out just as God intended, if that's your view.
MOST Christians don't share such a ridiculous view, and we DO think a tragedy occurred! We ALSO think that once a sicko emerges like that, he should be put down like a mad dog as soon as the drawing of our concealed weapon will allow! And if we're killed in the effort, we would hope that our friend's draw is right alongside ours, so that HE or SHE puts the mad dog down asap while sicko is killing us. The more armed good guys you've got in such a situation, the BETTER of a fighting chance you've got.
The FACT is that MORE guns held by good guys in that church would have almost certainly reduced the victim count. Same as in the Aurora theater. Same as virtually all of the other mass shootings in supposedly "gun free zones." If Sandy Hook taught us anything, it taught us that resisting by ANY means ups your chances and saves lives! And the more effective of resistance you can muster, the more lives are saved!
WAKE UP and realize that good guys carrying guns is NOT the problem. KEEPING them from carrying guns contributes to the increased death toll.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jun 22, 2015 - 03:31pm PT
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What do you wanna hear Stewart? You only seem to hear what you wanna hear, then try to further the conversation under your selected dichotomy.
you know the sermon with the line that says "Love thy neighbour".
What does that mean to you? Jesus didn't give it much value when He asked,"do not even the tax collectors do the same?". Do you want to be perfect as your Father in heaven? Then don't stop short.
"You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you."
Now all along I have been pointing at "what the sermon on the mount means" by bringing up what the victims loved ones did in retaliation. And that is to FORGIVE THEIR ENEMY!
If this was the societal norm, hate would shrivel up and die!
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jonnyrig
climber
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Jun 22, 2015 - 03:35pm PT
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Stewart
Trad climber
Courtenay, B.C.
Topic Author's Reply - Jun 22, 2015 - 02:18pm PT
Isn't it part of your Bill of Rights that guarantees the pursuit of happiness as one of your freedoms? It's a pity that the people who are endlessly baying about their "rights" to personally carry the weapons of death in public had the humanity choose the pursuit of happiness as the focus for their energies instead
Actually Stewart, many of the 1/3 of the US population who own firearms pursue happiness in a variety of ways, to which firearms don't necessarily need be there at all. My wife, for example, couldn't care less if they did pass a confiscation scheme (though she admits she would miss the elk steak and chukar hunting). For you to make such a broad, sweeping, inflammatory statement reveals utter contempt and an inability to find any sort of justifiable excuse to own a firearm. Similar to any other biased point of view in which logic and reason are incapable of overcoming the individual's emotionally charged stance for or against the particular subject at hand.
In other words, the gun nutz have as much chance of convincing you they're not evil as you have of convincing them to disarm. That's no more an enlightened point of view than you're accusing them of having.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jun 22, 2015 - 03:36pm PT
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Yet not one of these gun fanatics value the rights of individuals to safety above their "right" to possess as many murder machines as they desire.
That's amazingly ironic, coming from you!
Wow, just WOWWWWW!!!
YOU support the the sort of denial of the right of self-defense that the SC Senate foisted off on its people just prior to this very tragedy!
And then YOU actually blame the people that want to UPHOLD the victims' right of self-defense.
YOU very intentionally DISARM the victims and then decry the very people that want to ensure that they CAN exercise their RIGHT to defend themselves!
You DEMAND that they sit there helpless, while the very people that actually DO "value the rights of individuals" are the ones you attack as NOT valuing their rights!
Confusion abounds!
Between the two of us, WHO is the one that wants the victims to helplessly lack the capacity to respond in this sort of situation?
Between the two of us, WHO is the one that wants individuals to not have the capacity to actually EXERCISE their rights?
Look, this is really, really simple: If you leave me completely alone, you will have no problem with me or my gun. I'm not trying to take anything away from you. I'm not "after you" in ANY way. Just leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone. And that is the perspective of tens of millions of responsible gun carriers across the USA. It is people like YOU that are trying to take something away, and people like me are NOT like the helpless victims you seem to applaud FOR their very helplessness!!!
Quit taking away their RIGHT to self-defense!
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crankster
Trad climber
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Jun 22, 2015 - 03:39pm PT
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Spot on, Stewart...but Ron is resurrected - this thread is headed for the deep freeze. We had a month off and the positive change to the forum was noticeable...but too good to last.
Arm the congregation!!! Arm the theater goers!! Oh man.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jun 22, 2015 - 03:54pm PT
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^^^^ Oh, the hilarious appeal to the liberal media as a "proof" of something.
All your clip shows is that Archie is not well-spoken, which was exactly why his character was set up and employed to poke fun at the "conservative" perspective.
Arm the congregation!!! Arm the theater goers!! Oh man.
Problem you've got with using such a clip in response to me is that I'm no conservative!
If people in a congregation want to be armed, who are YOU to tell them that they must instead remain helpless and unable to defend themselves?
If people in a theater want to be armed, who are YOU to tell them that they must instead remain helpless and unable to defend themselves?
If Charleston taught us anything, it taught us that when people like YOU insist that other people MUST remain helplessly unable to exercise their RIGHT of self-defense, it is such as YOU that have disarmed them and told sickos: "Here you go. Here's a nice, soft target. Here's a 'gun free zone' just waiting for you to have the only gun in the place."
If you are PROUD of the FACT that people like YOU disarmed the victims, I can only say: SHAME on you! Perhaps the day will come when YOU get to be helplessly unarmed in a similar situation, and you get to count the endless minutes until the cops finally arrive to SAVE you from your sorry, helpless self.
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Stewart
Trad climber
Courtenay, B.C.
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 22, 2015 - 03:59pm PT
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crankster: you've got a point. Attempting to debate these clowns is like like trying to teach a stone monkey to fart.*
*Bernard Cornwell, I think.
Rdog: Go ahead - if I get booted for taking on the likes of you, then there truly is something deeply wrong with Supertopo. While you're whining, perhaps you can ask Chris to give you spelling lessons.
P.S.: Like it or not, the whole world IS pissed off about this.
P.P.S.: madbolter; WHAT liberal media?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jun 22, 2015 - 04:00pm PT
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^^^Yeah. This thread isn't about guns!
Primarily because the victims haven't made it so. Lets stick with what's important to the societal environment of each case. Please.
Gun debate wouldn't matter if we were to stay focused on the real threats.
Why don't you go pack some loads or sump'in ; )
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