Secession and Gun Control, or "That was fast!"

In this earlier Feb. 2018  blog posting I concluded that I thought the ignition point to get secession movements going was likely to be the passage of gun control legislation.

https://newtknight.blogspot.com/2018/02/status-of-texas-secession-secessionists.html#.Wsigt4jBqiO

The comment about gun control was at the very end.  It is part of a lengthy assessment of the status of the Texas secessionists. To give a very brief assessment, the Texas secessionists aren't going to gain any traction as long as Trump is in office and the Republicans control the government.

I blogged about a news article about secession and gun control March 27, 2018.

https://newtknight.blogspot.com/2018/03/liberal-left-is-noticing-secession-and.html#.WsihuIjBqiM

A left/liberal website Think Progress reported on some fringe elements advocating secession to prevent gun control. This is the link to their article.

https://thinkprogress.org/why-do-these-patriots-hate-america-ec1a093a8df6/

So I saw a developing idea among fringe elements. Maybe some time some where this would have consequences. I was really surprised that the issue of gun control and secession would find its way into state legislatures this fast with the introduction of a bill into the South Carolina legislature calling for secession if there is federal gun control legislation.

http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/382003-south-carolina-house-republicans-introduce-bill-to-consider-secession

http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article208132169.html

It became an Associated Press story.

Reminds me of the statement by South Carolinian James L. Petigru that South Carolina in 1860 was too small to be a republic but too large to be an insane asylum.

From the AP article we learn the following:

A trio of state House Republicans on Thursday quietly introduced a bill that would allow lawmakers to debate seceding from the U.S. "if the federal government confiscates legally purchased firearms in this State."

 The chief sponsor is Rep. Mike Pitts who contradictorily also says:

Pitts, a longtime law officer and Army veteran, said his bill isn't a call for secession but merely a proposal to make the action possible if events warrant.

"I'm not promoting secession. I served this country, and I don't want to see it broken up."

I think this shows that Pitts thinks that secession is a little out there as an idea or perhaps he doesn't have coherent thinking.

However, this puts the idea in the news for both South Carolina and in North Carolina where the story was covered in the Charlotte Observer.  https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/south-carolina/article208132169.html  The story is identical to the article in The State.

It has gotten national coverage in the media and with the Internet the secession proposal in South Carolina can be accessed by a national audience.

Perhaps this is the next ultra position to show that you are really a strong supporter on gun control. Or maybe it isn't. It could be that the Republican leadership is ready to severely criticize the three Republican legislators. Or it could be that some other Republican legislators will join the effort to make sure they don't lose the next Republican primary. Or it could be both. I think I have covered all the possibilities there.

However, the fact that this is proposed at all is cause for concern. We don't hear calls for the resignation of these three Republicans by the Republican leadership.

It is another incremental step forward in the normalization of secession. A little here and a little there secession continues to be normalized.

The attitude of the media has been bemusement. The history of secession is that it seems comical or outlandish until it isn't.

Any political movement, anything new, starts first with imagining it. At this point we have secession being imagined. We don't have the imagining of the consequences, just some idealized fantasy of secession. I don't see any anti-secession movement getting people imagining the consequences. There is just bemusement.

There needs to be conceptualized some anti-secession strategies with some group having some ongoing focus on preventing secession. That way when a body of ideas is needed they will be developed and there will be something better than some slogan like, "Better Together." (Used in opposition to Scottish secession.)

The fundamental problem in getting people to take secession seriously is that people think that nations are composed of some solid material, maybe concrete, and indestructible. The reality is that nations are imagined and are composed of dreams. Once the dream is gone, the nations may have all the apparatuses of state power, but as imposing as they may seem, a nation dependent on them alone, and not the support of the general population is in a desperate situation.

The collapse of the Soviet Union should have taught the public that. It hasn't. The secessionists however, were quick learners regarding this. The neo-Confederate Kennedy twins discussed the Soviet Union in their second edition of "The South Was Right!" Other secessionists noticed.

Also, I fear that if secession starts getting some traction the opposition to it will be blunt and unthinking and act to enable secession. Opposition to secession needs to be grounded in the field of cultural geography and that field's understanding of nationalism. The reliance on force will be a losing strategy.

However, at this point secession has moved forward just an increment. Perhaps I can't really believe that this is going anywhere. Even to myself it seems outlandish. However, I think that it might turn out to be very real and a great danger.