OK
Posted on 06/27/2008 7:47:38 AM PDT by epow
Friends and I raised a few Guinness in his honor last night.
Chicago is once again descending into anarchy. During the Daley era they had success with shipping Chicago’s “underprivileged” population out to the suburbs and hence lowering the crime rate, but the bottom of that curve has been hit and a new nihilist culture is seeping back in. The news here is one crazy killing and mass shooting after another.
Yes, it's very frightening to politicians and the criminal class, but I repeat myself.
"(The Constitution preserves) the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." -James Madison.
I was under the impression that the Old West had a court system and that people shooting each other was way overblown to sell books to the Easterners.
but wouldn’t more shootings be helping Gaia earth mother, and the global warming/cooling process. Less people (just like abortions) = less carbon foot prints, right?
Furthermore, despite the "myth" surrounding the OK Corral fight which persists to this day, none of the participants, on either side, were actually private citizens, as all of them were, in effect, law enforcement officers of one sort or another (yes, the Clanton-Mc Laury faction were "duly deputized" Tombstone deputies at the time).
the infowarrior
OK
Much of the "rest of the world" is composed of serfs, subjects, and slaves.
The rest of the world, if it hasn't already, can go to Hell.
The Old West usually *did* have a court system in place, and most of the disputes were settled legally.
While the instances of "gunplay in the streets" were overblown by the Eastern press and "dime novels" again, largely produced in New York, there were some instances of major gunfighting in the West/Midwest during the post-Civil War period. They basically fell under three different ctaegories.
The first category would be very straightforward, and that is the Northfield/Coffeyville scenario, where a band of armed thugs rode into a community to rob the local bank(s). Armed citizens would respond, and the gangs would be shot to pieces on their way out of town. Any survivors, such as Cole Younger, were later tried in a court of law for their crimes. This is nothing more than "community policing"...
The second category would be exemplified by the Lioncoln County/Johnson County "Wars" where an a group of individuals with a great deal of influence in a distant capital would start running roughshod over others whom they believed were their rivals. William Bonney is consdered an "outlaw", but why really was that? His conduct in the Lincoln County "War" was certainly no more reprehensible, and in some cases less, than the conduct of the opposition Murphy-Dolan faction, or even the United States Army, which when sent in "to keep the peace" sided with the Murphy-Dolan faction, and deliberately killed both Mr, and Mrs McSween, who were unarmed, and had taken no part in any fighting. No, "Billy the Kid" was deemed "outlaw" simply because his was the losing side of the war, although the Murphy-Dolan faction ended up losing their influence shortly thereafter, as the corruption in Santa Fe, in their favor, became more known to the populace of New Mexico.
The last category, and perhaps the most unique, was the Gunfight at the OK Corral, which was, when all is said, and done, a "turf war" between two rival gangs of less-than-honest cops.
the infowarrior
The specific incidents of violence you just described probably don’t cover a week of gun deaths in gun-banning DC and Chicago.
That means a long long fight forward with many backsteps and tumbles. Many dollars, and many a family's wealth squandered against the State's (practically) unlimited budget.
The landed class, the ones using "Esquire", the bureaucratic ones holding state sinecures, those directors, grant-writers and molligogs of the Foundations and Public Interest Groups with no sense of earning a dollar by hard work -- they have by the Court's Hand full of Heller now been set against those with ideals and limited budgets -- the orphans and widows. Why call them widows and orphans? Because the legal process strands each who will come to fight the oppressive laws alone like poor widows and homeless orphans. No state monies pour into the fight for their due rights -- nay, instead the state sets a great Man-Of-War of office and funding, lined with heavy and expensive cannon against them, like a giant bulldozer rolling into a tar-paper hovel.
State Decisis! Let the wrongs continue! Fight them at your peril and ruinage.
Ironically, the issue at hand, and the cause of catalyst of the gun fight at the OK Corral involved the bad guys refusal to surrender their weapons. The town had a policy against carrying firearms.
Someone correct my history if this is not accurate.
Never said that they did... The point I was trying to make was, that the incidences of gunplay in the Old West were nowhere near what Hollywood made them out to be, and that they had specific causes, and when the causes were addressed the violence would cease.
Where the gun-banners err, whether this is through ignorance, or cupidity, is in never really addressing the causes of the violence. Thus, the status quo of violence could never change.
The authorities won't tackle the challenge of the gangsters/gang-bangers, instead using the fig-leaf of "gun control" to hide the real nature of the problem. This is fraud, and I rightly call them on it, as their "gun control" has never saved a single life, at best, and in the case of DC at worst, has not only made the problem worse, but invoked the spectacle of the mayor of our capital city ilterally begging for the National Guard (*martial law*), to police the streets, for what was not an insurrection, but everyday crime...
Proof positive that the policies of the left do not work, and only exacerbate the problem. QED, it's time for a different approach...
the infowarrior
Thank you SAF for the Chicago lawsuit and for the NRA promising to also sue Chicago and New York.
As usual, GOA = AWOL.
Exactly right. Criminals are by definition those who do not obey laws, and that includes gun laws. Why would any sane person expect a criminal planning a murder or robbery to abandon the idea because it would be a crime for him or her to possess a gun? Expecting violent criminals to obey gun laws is like expecting old smutty faced Satan himself to obey the Ten Commandments, and Daley and his kind all know that as well as we do.
But gun control is not about crime prevention, it's all about people control. Daley and his kind want guns taken out of the hands of law abiding people because they're power mad, criminally inclined control freaks. They know that armed free men don't have to depend entirely on them for protection from criminals, and they also instinctively know that in the final analysis an armed citizenry represents the greatest threat to the excesses of power mad tyrants like themselves.
Someone correct my history if this is not accurate.
You are partially accurate, there was indeed, such a policy in Tombstone. The Clanton-Mc Laury group, being duly deputized Tombstone deputies (despite their unsavory character, and methods), were exempt from the policy as written, and the Earps (whose own reputations were not actually that sterling), being Federal Marshals, actually had no real legal jurisdiction within Tombstone proper, and thus really had no legal power to demand that the others disarm...
Bear in mind, when the Earp brothers, and John H. Holliday rode originally into Tomstone, Arizona Territory, they did not come to be lawmen, but to pursue financial opportunities, as they presented themselves. They only took on the badge to protect their interests in the Oriental Saloon...
the infowarrior
I think what I said came across wrong. Daley is saying this will turn the country into the Old West, when the country is already more dangerous than the Old West due to politicians like him.
And, contrary to popular belief and movie lore, Wyatt Earp and his cohorts were the “bad guys” in the scenario. History - perverted by modern movies and dime-store novels.
Yes, and no, because the Clanton outfit wasn't any better. There were no "good guys" in that affair. The OK Corral fight, and its aftermath, was two gangs of crooked cops, engaged in a turf war...
the infowarrior
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