Another month and another senseless gun massacre in the United States of America.
This is an especially bad one. In South Carolina, a place where Confederate and Rhodesian flags are prevalent a young white guy given a gun for his 21st birthday goes into a black church and kills nine innocent people.
Amongst those killed are a high school track and field coach, a Dallas Cowboys fan, a librarian and a state senator and preacher. A six year old kid survived by feigning death. They were having a bible study class at the time they were shot.
The victims included Clementa Pinckney, a senior pastor at the church and a Democratic member of the state senate. Three of the victims were older aged women. No one should die in this way.
There has been lots of media response in the United States as you can imagine. The right are saying that the incident, one of too many that have occurred, should not be politicised. They treat other terrorist incidents involving foreigners in a different way. Wars have started because of attacks by non American citizens but they have this strange inability to realise how bad the problem is when one of their own indiscriminately kills.
Barak Obama summarised the situation with these words.
There is something particularly heartbreaking about a death happening in a place in which we seek solace and we seek peace in a place of worship. Mother Emanuel is, in fact, more than a church. This is a place of worship that was founded by African Americans seeking liberty. This is a church that was burned to the ground because its worshippers worked to end slavery. … This is a sacred place in the history of Charleston and in the history of America.”
On gun control he said this:
I’ve had to make statements like this too many times. We don’t have all of the facts, but we do know that once again innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.
Now is the time for mourning and for healing, but let’s be clear at some point, we as a country, we have to reckon with the fact that this mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. It is in our power to do something about it.”
If you need evidence of what a bunch of dickheads the NRA’s leadership are then this provides perfect proof:
A board member for the National Rifle Association blamed pastor and South Carolina state Sen. Clementa Pinckney for not only his own death, but the deaths of eight others in Wednesday night’s terrorist attack at his church, Think Progress reported on Thursday night.
Charles “Chas” Cotton made the remark on the Texas Concealed Handgun License (TexasCHL) forum, which bills itself as “the focal point for Texas firearms information and discussions.” Cotton, who is listed as a moderator on the site, made the derogatory remark in a thread concerning the mass shooting.
“He voted against concealed-carry,” Cotton said of Pinckney. “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.”
Get that? We just need more guns and if only everyone had a gun no one would ever use them. Thinking such stupidity is one thing but to go out and say it suggests levels of insensitivity mixed with stupidity I have not seen before.
I thought I would leave the final words on this post to John Stewart and to my favourite over the top US blogger Wonkette. Stewart said this in as an incredible stand up he has done in his long and illustrious career:
And Wonkette eviscerates Fox News’ attempt to brand the massacre as anything but an appalling example of racism:
Silly us, we unfairly assumed that a white guy shooting up a black church might have something to do with hostility toward black people, but nah, hostility toward Christians makes more sense. Christians are the most oppressed victims in America these days, as everyone on the Fox payroll keeps telling us, thanks to godless liberals and gaysexuals and secret Muslim president, B. HUSSEIN O’Hitler. Besides, if the shooter had wanted to kill black people for being black, he would have gone into an area filled with black people, like a basketball court. Not a black church, which is filled with Christians, who might happen to be black, but what’s that got to do with anything?
She finishes off by saying:
Oh sure, of course more guns in churches is the answer. It’s hard out there for a Christian in America these days, trying to love his neighbor and turn the other cheek and all that feel-good Jesus stuff. But sometimes, when Christians are under attack, the best thing pastors can do is forget the Jesus talk and load for bear to shoot thy neighbor dead, just in case. Isn’t that what Jesus would do?
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