Charleston Church Massacre: Thug, Terrorism, Disturbed Loner?

An alleged manifesto by the killer:
http://egbertowillies.com/2015/06/20/ame-church-massacre-terrorist-dylann-roof-manifesto-allegedly-found/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=facebook_page&utm_medium=EgbertoWillies.com&utm_content=AME%20Church%20Massacre%20Terrorist%20Dylann%20Roof%20Manifesto%20allegedly%20found

With assholes like you around someone should show some human compassion. And as to politicizing this incident it needs to be because after one or two or more a year of these killings without any state in the country at least mandating mental exanimations for gun owners. You can be denied driving privledges but not the privledge of owning a gun. How crazy is that.

Legalizing drug use would empty a lot of prisons of nonviolent people.

We deny people the right to legally drive a car and we deny people the right to legally own a gun, and there is a fair amount of agreement that we need to do more of it. The proposal for instance to deny all those convicted of domestic violence from owning a gun might just become law.

Perhaps you should be listening and learning rather than talking, as you dont seem to have enough subject matter expertise to form rational reasonable thoughts on the subject of gun violence.

While on the face of it, it might seem offensive that the state takes a life, but in the big picture, the state takes countless lives. Every person who dies homeless and hungry for instance is a life that the state has effectively chosen to end, not by action but by inaction, in not providing mental health, shelter and food for those in desperate situations. Millions of troops have been called up over the years, and sent into harm's way, or even into a certain death. In these and other examples, we have people who have committed no crimes yet will die due to government decisions; is a convicted murderer's life somehow more valuable?
While nobody benefits from arbitrary and improperly administered justice, and nobody should endorse the death penalty being used to promote racism, that fear mustn't prevent its use any more than rocks should be banned from the earth simply because someone "might" use one improperly in throwing it through a window. Lives WILL be taken by the government in all cases; putting a person in prison for life is taking their life, just slower. The single important issue is that justice is administered with great care and accuracy.
The two cases that sum up for me this view are:
1) Charles Manson. Convicted in 1971 in the Tate "Helter Skelter" murders of 7 people, has been in prison since. Among the insanities of his imprisonment are his 12 appearances before the parole board, at which times injured parties/family members have repeatedly had to testify and relive the horror. His danger to the public has been very real even while imprisoned; he influenced Squeaky Fromme to attempt to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, which she surely would have succeeded at had she been more competent.
2) Timothy McVeigh. Convicted in 1997 of the Oklahoma City Murrah building bombing that killed 168 people; executed in 2001.

Both crimes were horrific, neither man's guilt has ever been in question and both admitted to their crimes in addition to extensive forensic confirmation. McVeigh's chapter is over however. There are no parole hearings, no need to dredge up every detail every few years. There is no danger of him starting a new movement and recruiting actors into further mayhem, as Manson has done at every opportunity. No voices of protest have been raised saying McVeigh was wrongly convicted or executed.
Explain to me please how American society would be better with him alive.

WOW, your embrace of the concept of the nanny state is insane. People develope through trial and error, your utopia would make the human race imbeciles. THe disconnect between your political views and reality is vast.

The disconnect is between your ears hawkeye, and it's vast. I didn't for a second say that the government CAN or SHOULD be a nanny state and take care of every person's need forever. Only that it DOES make a decision not to help people beyond a certain point even when it has the ability to do so. As such YOUR government can and does take lives every day, just as we expect it to. The point however, which of course you're probably too dense to understand, is that it is moronic to whine about the government taking the life of a known confessed and convicted killer, while you sit in blissful ignorance as other government decisions will take the lives of countless veterans by deciding it is too expensive to give them the medicines or surgeries that could save their lives. It's much more consistent and pragmatic to accept all of these deaths including those of the convicted murderers as practical decisions balancing lives against costs, obligations, responsibilities, and risks.

You're welcome to your opinion. I gave mine, which I am welcome to as well.

This most recent slaughter of people exercising their right to worship was executed by a young white racist. He hoped for a race war, and said he had to do it to prevent black people from taking over the U.S.

I have no sympathy for him, he sought out and wallowed in some skinhead dream of white supremacy. He has broken the hearts, hopes and dreams of many members of that congregation and the rest of the country.

President Obama addressed the nation once again ( 14 times) about mass shootings. When are we going to adopt reasonable measures about background checks? When is enough enough? Because apparently Sandy Hook didn't shock us enough.

Even with tough gun laws, will it stop killers from getting guns, maybe not, but for Christs sake can we just try.

Last week an old colleague from work shot himself in the head because he was diagnosed with Parkingsons. It never occurred to me he kept a loaded gun in his home. Many of his old co-workers are reeling in disbelief.....but he did this to himself out of fear for the disease, not racist reasons. The 21 year old who killed the prayer group simply wanted to kill black people, there is no getting around that.

Compassion for a white murderer from the man who called black victim Michael Brown a thug.

It's pretty clear what you are.

A person with a Hawk Eye.

Blacks in Ferguson are also hurting, from an economy that is in the crapper, terrible schools, police who were very aggressive and from a city that decided to use citizens as ATMs to fund operations though fines and forfeitures. All of which I long ago said. You see what you want to see, and nothing more, that much is clear.

I have stated my opinion on a2k, re the death penalty, more than once, so my longtime friends may want to skip this. I used to favor the death penalty. After all, who thinks Manson, McVeigh and their ilk deserve life? Nobody. A man murdered my older brother for stupid reasons. Yet, I stand against the death penalty. Plain and simple, there are far too many corrupt prosecutors, lawyers and judges. The rich often walk. The poor often get convicted. Minorities to the extreme. If they die, the innocent cannot be exonerated. I prefer that the animals like the subject of this thread live out their lives locked up than to have a single innocent person executed.

a gun in church, no less..

Don't get me started, or I'll be ranting.

I didn't type thanks to EdgarB for showing the excellent and moving photos of the people murdered. Though I'd seen them, it is good to have in them this thread, page 4 for reference, all the good faces.

If only things were so simple. Unfortunately those locked up might well be released. I happens all the time; in California, such releases are mandated by courts because of their overcrowded prisons. When a convicted, guilty and unreformed/unrepentant criminal is returned to the streets, the results are often not pretty. And even if they're kept locked up, they might well injure or murder an innocent person within the prison.

There is no human perfectability. I prefer a few bad guys live to any good guys needlessly executed. No matter how many such cases you dredge up. For every story like that there is a story of an innocent convicted.

There really isn't much difference in outcomes (under the current circumstances) between the two scenarios. Innocent people die (as in the example above) in either scenario. President Ford almost died as a result of Manson only having been locked up. While it would be nice if opposing the death penalty would stop deaths of innocents, it doesn't.

Executions on the other hand have stopped murder in its tracks. Nobody dies unnecessarily while we have the death penalty.

Putting up an umbrella doesn't stop the rains from ever again raining on your head, but it doesn't mean it isn't a sensible thing to use. And parallel to that, while existence of the death penalty won't stop new babies from being born who might grow up to be murderers, it has certainly made sure that no more babies will be killed by Timothy McVeigh's bombs. That is 100% sure, and no overcrowding situation or change in political winds will alter that.

The truth is, the death penalty does not deter murder. Never has, never will, except in some isolated instances. But having no death penalty deters execution of the innocent.