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[Opiate]

I have a Mossberg 930 (automatic shotgun) for home defense. That's all I need it for. Someone tried breaking into my home 4 weeks ago when my wife and (at the time) 1 month old were asleep. I'd rather my wife or myself have it and use it than not have anything at all. Good thing is the cops arrived only two minutes after my wife called them.

Sure, I'm not saying that all safety precautions of any kind are bad, just that taking it to the other extreme is also bad. It is not always better to have something and not need it than need it and not have it. There are lots of times when that isn't true.

Let's say I have a different experience than you do: I buy a gun and then never have to use it my entire life. Was that a worthwhile investment? I'm not sure it was. It's money spent, and something I have to keep/maintain for decades. Maybe it was still worth it, but maybe not. What if I buy one of everything and anything I could potentially and possibly use at some point in the future? The list of things which fit that description is nearly endless, and would get very time consuming very fast to store and very expensive to own.

 

[Deified Data]

They've denied the racial implications and spun it as an attack on Christianity, which is really just a clever way of making the victims white.

http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/06/18/foxs-steve-doocy-its-extraordinary-that-charles/204043

Has the shooter ever expressed any anti-Christian sentiments?

 

[The Beard]

People really don't like being told that they're racist and are living in a country primarily of racists.

Racism isn't going away any time soon because too many idiots cover their ears and shout "NO RACISM" whenever a racist incident happens. Hell, even the news is trying its hardest to not call this what it is: domestic terrorism at the hands of a white supremacist. Instead they frame it around "mental health" as a crutch so as not talk about the racism because people get hot and bothered.

Racism will never go away, ever.

 

[Wolfgunblood Garopa]

Lindsey Graham, what a joke.

 

[CrimzonSamurai]

Guys like him hate themselves, trying to find a scapegoat for their shitty lives

He's probably just poor and had crappy redneck parents who told him all about how affirmative action was the reason they were so poor and such crappy rednecks.

 

[BlackGoku03]

Sure, I'm not saying that all safety precautions of any kind are bad, just that taking it to the other extreme is also bad. It is not always better to have something and not need it than need it and not have it. There are lots of times when that isn't true.

Let's say I have a different experience than you do: I buy a gun and then never have to use it my entire life. Was that a worthwhile investment? I'm not sure it was. It's money spent, and something I have to keep/maintain for decades. Maybe it was still worth it, but maybe not. What if I buy one of everything and anything I could potentially and possibly use at some point in the future? The list of things which fit that description is nearly endless, and would get very time consuming very fast to store and very expensive to own.

oh definitely. The guy you quoted is a little overboard but hell, I'd rather have that than nothing too.

 

[J10]

Has the shooter ever expressed any anti-Christian sentiments?

I haven't seen anything in any of the reports yet. Right now it stands to reason that he'd attack a church merely because it was vulnerable.

 

[FortuneFaded]

I lived in Aiken for a bit in the early 90's. One day I was driving down a back road somewhere north of town and came across a huge handmade billboard: "Come to our Klan meeting every Friday night! Free BBQ!"
I actually stopped the car to look because, being a rather sheltered white kid from up North, I had never seen anything like it. The sign was "cheery" - like being in a hate group was the most normal thing in the world.

What was the food like?

 

[marrec]

I haven't seen anything in any of the reports yet. Right now it stands to reason that he'd attack a church merely because it was vulnerable.

Black pastor dude on Fox News:

"He didn't go to a bar, he didn't go to a basketball court"

O.O

 

[Cow Mengde]

Has the shooter ever expressed any anti-Christian sentiments?

He shot up a church so I guess they could spin it that way.

 

[entremet]

Lindsey Graham, what a joke.

What did he say?

 

[Whitman's Ghost]

People really don't like being told that they're racist and are living in a country primarily of racists.

Racism isn't going away any time soon because too many idiots cover their ears and shout "NO RACISM" whenever a racist incident happens. Hell, even the news is trying its hardest to not call this what it is: domestic terrorism at the hands of a white supremacist. Instead they frame it around "mental health" as a crutch so as not talk about the racism because people get hot and bothered.

Mental health is a HUGE issue in this country man. It knows no bounds racial or not.

I'm not sure you can pin the media for all kinds of things. They blew up plenty of stories with racial divide in the last year. I haven't watched much on this one though.

 

[PhoenixDark]

Not a fan of Obama's comments on guns. That shit is weak, meaningless at this point and only serve to turn this into another partisan spectacle. This guy was given a gun for his birthday, and there is no evidence yet that he had a criminal record or anything that would prevent him from having a gun. So where does gun control come into play? He would have still had a gun even if SC had tougher laws.

It's a tired narrative that is intellectually insulting. The vast majority of gun violence in this country comes from handguns. Yet nobody is talking about banning handguns, and background checks do nothing given that many of these killers don't have a record. So what's the solution?

You want to address gun violence? Go after straw purchases and the trafficking of illegal guns on the underground market. The American public has made it pretty fucking clear they don't give a fuck about gun violence, and it's high time a politician called them out instead of this nonstop "soul searching" bullshit Obama pulls. Let it go, it's not working.

 

[Deified Data]

I haven't seen anything in any of the reports yet. Right now it stands to reason that he'd attack a church merely because it was vulnerable.

If that's the case the spin should be pretty easy to combat, if he has stated racist opinions but none regarding Christianity. I'm not sure how seriously Fox wants to push that angle at this point, it could just be the opinion of Doocy.

 

[jmdajr]

I don't see how this is a terrorist attack. To me a Terrorist attack is one against institution/country/nation etc. based on religion.

This is however a mass murder from a mentally deranged racist. The facts are all right there. To me the church is just a location like a mall or school.

 

[Christopher]

Just found out that in 2014 there were 12,536 deaths due to gun violence. That's 34 deaths a day, or almost 1.5 deaths per hour! Wtf!

Is this in he US alone...?

 

[Imm0rt4l]

I don't see how this is a terrorist attack. To me a Terrorist attack is one against institution/country/nation etc. based on religion.

This is however a mass murder from a mentally deranged racist. The facst are all right there.

A black church

 

[Whitman's Ghost]

Not a fan of Obama's comments on guns. That shit is weak, meaningless at this point and only serve to turn this into another partisan spectacle. This guy was given a gun for his birthday, and there is no evidence yet that he had a criminal record or anything that would prevent him from having a gun. So where does gun control come into play? He would have still had a gun even if SC had tougher laws.

It's a tired narrative that is intellectually insulting. The vast majority of gun violence in this country comes from handguns. Yet nobody is talking about banning handguns, and background checks do nothing given that many of these killers don't have a record. So what's the solution?

You want to address gun violence? Go after straw purchases and the trafficking of illegal guns on the underground market. The American public has made it pretty fucking clear they don't give a fuck about gun violence, and it's high time a politician called them out instead of this nonstop "soul searching" bullshit Obama pulls. Let it go, it's not working.

I think the only problem to getting something done about handguns is that people don't trust their government here. And with every crazy republican or even democrat sometimes they start to trust it less. If we had a government we could trust totally then I think we could do something about handguns. It's pretty clear something needs to be done.

For instance, in a perfect world every handgun owner would need to check up with a mental health expert like every year or something. Just saying in a perfect world we could do something about this. No one seems to want to on that level.

 

[CrimzonSamurai]

I lived in Aiken for a bit in the early 90's. One day I was driving down a back road somewhere north of town and came across a huge handmade billboard: "Come to our Klan meeting every Friday night! Free BBQ!"
I actually stopped the car to look because, being a rather sheltered white kid from up North, I had never seen anything like it. The sign was "cheery" - like being in a hate group was the most normal thing in the world.

The KKK has tried to rebrand itself as a family organization. They don't do the robes anymore, for one thing, except maybe for certain ceremonies. They wear blue suits now. They try and kind of pitch it as like "white only boy scouts/church group" type thing.

Also the north is no refuge from the Klan. Pennsylvania has the most KKK members per square mile of any state.

Surprised you saw that in Aiken, though. I've never seen Klan activity in SC, and my dad has lived there his whole 65 years and only seen public Klan activity once.

 

[Ke0]

Mental health is a HUGE issue in this country man. It knows no bounds racial or not.

I dunno mate, it definitely has bounds as in crimes where the perpetrator is black are never framed as "mental health" issues. Black suspect kills 4 others? Gang violence, thug, black on black crime, etc. How come it's not mental health issues?

Many people suggest merely the act of killing someone renders a person as mentally ill, then surely all those news stories of Black American suspects should be filed under mental illness but they aren't...why?

 

[esquire]

Has the shooter ever expressed any anti-Christian sentiments?

Unlikely if he was a fan of apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia.

The better question is, are he or his family members from Southern Africa? It's always been funny to me how bitter white people still are about that, but it's only a relatively small minority of white supremacists in North America who really care deeply about it. I would've assumed, considering where the attack took place, that he'd be more mired in American racial politics.

Sylvia Johnson, a cousin of Pinckney, told MSNBC that a survivor told her the gunman reloaded five times during the attack despite pleas for him to stop.

"He just said, 'I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country," Johnson said.

Police said Roof was armed with a handgun but surrendered quietly when he was stopped.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/18/us-usa-shooting-south-carolina-idUSKBN0OY06A20150618

I don't see how this is a terrorist attack. To me a Terrorist attack is one against institution/country/nation etc. based on religion.

This is however a mass murder from a mentally deranged racist. The facts are all right there. To me the church is just a location like a mall or school.

Ignore this troll.

 

[jmdajr]

A black church

I guess that's true. But did the dude do this under religious pretenses?

 

[Whitman's Ghost]

I don't see how this is a terrorist attack. To me a Terrorist attack is one against institution/country/nation etc. based on religion.

This is however a mass murder from a mentally deranged racist. The facts are all right there. To me the church is just a location like a mall or school.

Yeah, I don't really see the terrorist angle either.

But who the hell raised this kid is what I want to know. There are parenting issues here. I'm almost certain.

 

[Opiate]

He shot up a church so I guess they could spin it that way.

I think the idea is this: this shooting could be caused by a number of things. I agree that a white male going and shooting up a predominantly black church is not inherently fueled by racism. It could be fueled by anti-religious sentiment, sure. It also is possible that he chose a church because the people there are vulnerable and chose this church not because the people were black, but because the church was 10 feet from his house and it was an easy target. If those were the case, then the act might not be motivated by race or religion, it could just be sheer insanity.

But that's not what we're seeing. We have evidence of this young man wearing flags associated with white supremacists groups. He did not live particularly close to this church, so he went out of his way to go there. He said that these people were destroying America and that he needed to take it back, which doesn't make much sense as an anti-religious statement but does make quite a bit of sense in a racist context.

So if you want to posit that this attack was motivated by something other than racist ideology, you're going to want some evidence. Here is a statement he made that shows he hated Christians, for instance; here is a picture of him with the pastor, which shows they had a prior history and he was really after the pastor. Something like that. Right now, the evidence I've seen pretty clearly points to this being motivated by race, and little evidence to suggest otherwise.

 

[Indicate]

So John Mullins, a friend of Dylann, said that Dylann would 'jokingly' say racist comments about african americans even though he had african american friends but didn't think it was serious.

Just because one says what they're doing is a joke doesn't mean it's not racist.

 

[HyperionX]

Not a fan of Obama's comments on guns. That shit is weak, meaningless at this point and only serve to turn this into another partisan spectacle. This guy was given a gun for his birthday, and there is no evidence yet that he had a criminal record or anything that would prevent him from having a gun. So where does gun control come into play? He would have still had a gun even if SC had tougher laws.

It's a tired narrative that is intellectually insulting. The vast majority of gun violence in this country comes from handguns. Yet nobody is talking about banning handguns, and background checks do nothing given that many of these killers don't have a record. So what's the solution?

You want to address gun violence? Go after straw purchases and the trafficking of illegal guns on the underground market. The American public has made it pretty fucking clear they don't give a fuck about gun violence, and it's high time a politician called them out instead of this nonstop "soul searching" bullshit Obama pulls. Let it go, it's not working.

I've been suggesting banning handguns for a long time. It would be nice if more people come to the same conclusion I have.

 

[jmdajr]

I dunno mate, it definitely has bounds as in crimes where the perpetrator is black are never framed as "mental health" issues. Black suspect kills 4 others? Gang violence, thug, black on black crime, etc. How come it's not mental health issues?

Many people suggest merely the act of killing someone renders a person as mentally ill, then surely all those news stories of Black American suspects should be filed under mental illness but they aren't...why?

Mental health stuff is usually based on no logical motive. It's not about turf, or money, or drugs, or your old cheating girlfriend. You just want to kill folks.

But if this is hate crime..I don't know. Because there is motive there besides just taking people out for no reason.

 

[CrimzonSamurai]

Terrorism can be political, too, not just religious.

The issue I have with the "terrorist" moniker is that terrorism is usually targeted randomly, where as this was very focused.

It could definitely fall under the definition of terrorism, as it was meant to inspire fear in a certain population, but it's also not really "terrorism classic."

This certainly is more fitting of the term than Sandy Hook or Aurora was, though, and some people were trying like crazy to apply it then.

 

[chertipros]

I guess that's true. But did the dude do this under religious pretenses?

Churches are important aspects of the black community and this church in particular held significant historical significance. It's terrorism

 

[Wolfgunblood Garopa]

What did he say?

That the guy was merely mentally ill and the murders weren't racially motivated.

 

[GeoramA]

What a nightmare and my heart goes out to the families of the victims. So senseless.

 

[entremet]

That the guy was merely mentally ill and the murders weren't racially motivated.

There it is.

 

[Whitman's Ghost]

I dunno mate, it definitely has bounds as in crimes where the perpetrator is black are never framed as "mental health" issues. Black suspect kills 4 others? Gang violence, thug, black on black crime, etc. How come it's not mental health issues?

Many people suggest merely the act of killing someone renders a person as mentally ill, then surely all those news stories of Black American suspects should be filed under mental illness but they aren't...why?

That is a good question. I can't answer it fully. There is definitely a lot of mental illness in the AA communities. I think maybe they just see it as drugs and survival. Honestly, THEY don't want to classify anyone as mentally ill hardly ever.

White people in murder suicides, hell even black people. Murder suicides have gone through the roof in this country. But we never hear about their prescriptions and their mental health really. Seems more of a cover up than anything else.

You think we will hear if this dude was on medication? Doubt it. They might talk of him being mentally ill but nothing ever comes of it in this country. No new laws are passed with mentally unstable people and guns. Ever.

I'm not disconnecting his racism with mental illness either. Just commenting one part of it.

 

[Deified Data]

I guess that's true. But did the dude do this under religious pretenses?

Religious motivation isn't a necessary component of terrorism - that's just our culture's post-9/11 fixation on Islam coming into play. At it's heart, terrorism is using violence to spread fear and demoralize a specific group of people, the reason is secondary. Unless this man was a raging berserker intent on killing anything in his path (he wasn't, his crime was planned and the target is too specific to be a coincidence), the crime fits the definition of terrorism to a T

 

[LiquidSword]

Not a fan of Obama's comments on guns. That shit is weak, meaningless at this point and only serve to turn this into another partisan spectacle. This guy was given a gun for his birthday, and there is no evidence yet that he had a criminal record or anything that would prevent him from having a gun. So where does gun control come into play? He would have still had a gun even if SC had tougher laws

Pretty sure he had a felony drug charge in April so that would prevent him from buying a gun.

Edit: Looked it up it was in March not April and he was arrested on felony drug possession but it was still pending

 

[Fenderputty]

If that's the case the spin should be pretty easy to combat, if he has stated racist opinions but none regarding Christianity. I'm not sure how seriously Fox wants to push that angle at this point, it could just be the opinion of Doocy.

Didn't somone say there's a song in his FB that from a Christian band?

 

[jmdajr]

Religious motivation isn't a necessary component of terrorism - that's just our culture's post-9/11 fixation on Islam coming into play. At it's heart, terrorism is using violence to spread fear and demoralize a specific group of people, the reason is secondary. Unless this man was a raging berserker intent on killing anything in his path (he wasn't, his crime was planned and the target is too specific to be a coincidence), the crime fits the definition of terrorism to a T

That's fair. I guess I always just see it that way.

 

[shiba5]

What was the food like?

Ha, I guess I walked right into that one.
It was probably great BBQ. Too bad it came with a heaping side of racism.

 

[Pepiope]

Sure, I'm not saying that all safety precautions of any kind are bad, just that taking it to the other extreme is also bad. It is not always better to have something and not need it than need it and not have it. There are lots of times when that isn't true.

Let's say I have a different experience than you do: I buy a gun and then never have to use it my entire life. Was that a worthwhile investment? I'm not sure it was. It's money spent, and something I have to keep/maintain for decades. Maybe it was still worth it, but maybe not. What if I buy one of everything and anything I could potentially and possibly use at some point in the future? The list of things which fit that description is nearly endless, and would get very time consuming very fast to store and very expensive to own.

Not to speak for all gun owners, but I don't think any gun owner wants to use their weapon for the purpose in which it was intended, but they will buy one anyway to protect their family just in case the situation arises. It's all about peace of mind. Some people would equate owning a gun to owning things like a first aid kit, or a jack for their car.

 

[Whitman's Ghost]

Pretty sure he had a felony drug charge in April so that would prevent him from buying a gun.

Ahh so he was a felon even?

 

[riotous]

Ahh so he was a felon even?

If he was charged in April of 2015 it's unlikely he's already a "Felon."

I don't think being charged is enough to remove someone's right to own a weapon.

 

[Zuhzuhzombie!!]

I don't see how this is a terrorist attack. To me a Terrorist attack is one against institution/country/nation etc. based on religion.

This is however a mass murder from a mentally deranged racist. The facts are all right there. To me the church is just a location like a mall or school.

LOL. Let the excuses fly!

 

[PhoenixDark]

I've been suggesting banning handguns for a long time. It would be nice if more people come to the same conclusion I have.

I don't think the vast majority of people would support that, nor would I. There are too many guns on the streets that shouldn't be there - and they're being pumped into cities. That's the biggest issue as far as I'm concerned.

 

[CrimzonSamurai]

Ahh so he was a felon even?

If he wasn't convicted of the felony charge he can still get guns in the interim before the conviction.

Seems like an oversight, although it wouldn't have mattered in this scenario since he had secondary sources.

 

[red731]

That the guy was merely mentally ill and the murders weren't racially motivated.

"He just said, 'I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country," Johnson said.

Are you working for FOX?

 

[Yaphett Kotto]

Didn't somone say there's a song in his FB that from a Christian band?

Yea, forgot who, tho.

 

[jmdajr]

LOL. Let the excuses fly!

Hey look. Not even a counterpoint. At least others had more to share.

 

[J10]

That the guy was merely mentally ill and the murders weren't racially motivated.

Read more details and work on your pattern recognition.

 

[CrimzonSamurai]

Are you working for FOX?

He's summarizing what the people on Fox are saying. Explicatively.

Read more details and work on your pattern recognition.

He was summarizing Lindsay Graham's comments.

 

[Whitman's Ghost]

That's fair. I guess I always just see it that way.

To be frank though the media never uses this term for anything but politically motivated stuff.