The awful shooting inside a church in Charleston, S.C., last week gives Americans a lot to think about.
That a 21-year-old man could develop such racist beliefs that he would be motivated to kill should be chief among our contemplations.
Dylann Roof told a friend "blacks were taking over the world. Someone needed to do something about it for the white race. He said he wanted segregation between whites and blacks."
Reports from a witness to the shooting indicate Roof, who spent an hour inside the church, told the church-goers, "I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go."
NBC News reported Roof told police investigators he almost didn't go through with the mass murders because everyone in the Emmanuel AME Church "was so nice to him," basing the report on unnamed sources.
Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. called the shootings "pure, pure concentrated evil." I can't think of a more apt description.
Unless the police have their facts terribly wrong, Dylann Roof is to blame for the deaths of nine people inside that church. He's responsible for his own thinking and his own actions. Perhaps it's natural for people, especially politicians, to start looking beyond the responsible party for targets of blame. In their rhetoric, politicians cast blame toward nebulous concepts such as our "culture" and "societal attitudes."
"How many innocent people in our country, from little children to church members to movie theater attendees, how many people do we need to see cut down before we act?" Hillary Clinton remarked the day after the massacre. She offered no specifics.
President Obama on Thursday acknowledge not having all 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."
No doubt gun-control advocates were nodding their heads in agreement, but my problem with the quick-draw rhetoric on guns is that it almost never gets specific. What gun control measure would have specifically stopped Dylann Roof from carrying through on his evil intentions?
As of Friday, there were conflicting reports about where Roof may have gotten the gun. Some said his father bought the gun for him as a gift. Other says Roof purchased the gun himself. In either case, there are gun control laws on the books that were simply ignored.
If Roof's father knew of his previous felony charge involving drug possession, it was illegal for him to give the gun as a gift. If Dylann himself purchased the gun at a gun store, he went through the already required federal background check and that system failed to flag him as a person barred from buying a gun. In either case, the laws were on the books and did nothing to protect the churchgoers.
I didn't hear a single politician last week describe a new gun proposal that would have prevented Dylann Roof from carrying out his evil act.
To his credit, Obama remarked Friday that most gun owners are law-abiding citizens. And those law-abiding gun owners are the ones who feel the burden of new guns laws passed in reaction to a tragic incident in which there are calls to do something about gun violence. The law breakers will continue to be law breakers no matter how many laws are passed with good intentions. The question always needs to be "What would have made a difference?"
None of those generic gun control reactions given voice last week would have made a bit of difference.
For many gun-control advocates, the real desire, the real solution, is to get rid of guns, and believe it or not, some gun-owning Americans would embrace a gun-free United States if that was even remotely close to a potential reality. But it's a Utopian dream.
Most Americans gun owners will never shoot someone, so what we've got to deal with are the fringes of our population for whom violence is a viable option. It's an embarrassment that our politicians devote so much more time to the pipe dream of strict gun control while mental health providers continue to struggle for funding to provide treatment for people going through anger, depression or more serious mental illness that contribute to acts of violence.
This nation can never be considered serious about attacking the root causes of violence as long as the availability of mental health services remains less a priority than gun control laws that won't stop the violence. Intervention will save more lives than another law to be ignored by someone already intent on doing harm.
Commentary on 06/20/2015