NRA Exec Slammed for Blaming Pastor.

NRA board member Charles Cotton suggested that Senator Pinckney, slain pastor of the Emanuel AM Church in Charleston SC, bears responsibility for the massacre as he made comments in an online chat room he administers called texaschlforum.com.

At Reuters:

“In an online thread about Wednesday night’s mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, Cotton said that one of the nine people slain, church pastor and Democratic state Senator Clementa Pinckney, had voted against legislation in 2011 that would have allowed concealed possession of handguns in restaurants, day-care centers and churches.”

“Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead,” Cotton wrote.”

Its true, Pinckney did vote against such legislation.  Also true, South Carolina has laws prohibiting weapons in Churches.  We can speculate, with reasonable certainty, that homicidal maniacs are deterred from action when they know they may face opposition to their violence.

While blame falls only to Roof himself, Cotton made a point.  Though awkwardly.

We routinely hear some argue that defense against an armed aggressor is to be avoided.  Or that having that option matters little.  That makes absolutely no sense.  None.  An older example:

“In the wake of the unthinkable massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, pro-gun ideologues are once again calling for ordinary citizens to arm themselves as a solution to mass shootings. If only the principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School had possessed a M-4 assault rifle she could’ve stopped the killer, they say. This latest twist on a long-running argument isn’t just absurd on its face; there is no evidence to support it. As I reported recently in our in-depth investigation, not one of 62 mass shootings in the United States over the last 30 years has been stopped this way.”

Of course they were not stopped “this way.”  There was nobody to stop them, or try to at least.  There is all the evidence in the world to refute that type of “in-depth” argument.

And this recent nonsense from Mother Jones:

“…there has never been any evidence that mass shooters picked their targets based on gun regulations; to the contrary, data from scores of cases shows perpetrators had other specific motivations for where they attacked, including racial hatred. The idea that armed citizens stop crimes in the United States has also been wildly exaggerated by the gun lobby, as a new study based on federal data reaffirms.”

That’s a whopper.  We can count on shooters generally targeting the weak and unarmed:

From last summer’s mass public killers in Santa Barbara and Canada, to the Aurora movie theater shooter, these killers made it abundantly clear in their diaries or on Facebook how they avoided targets where people with guns could stop them.

And even if they don’t, why argue that armed defense is not a viable option?

http://robertsgunshop.blogspot.com/

Here’s a good example of how someone intervened, with fortunate results:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6PeC6NTnpY

Of course we can debate how security officer Mike Jones in the above incident stopped the aggressor, but the end result was none were killed.  Other than the shooter.  This, in the face of a deranged man blasting away at the un-armed.

Or this example:

http://www.foxcarolina.com/story/28998992/firefighter-cwps-likely-stopped-a-massacre-of-children-firefighters

A parking lot full of children.  The aggressor was stopped.  If not for the firefighters who subdued the man, no one would have been harmed?   You sure about that?

And another:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/hero-oklahoma-factory-beheading-quail-hunting-boy-scout-article-1.1954039

Man with knife beheads co-worker.  So, if no armed defense took place he would have stopped at the two ladies he killed/injured?  Wishful thinking.

Still more:

http://crimepreventionresearchcenter.org/2015/04/uber-driver-in-chicago-stops-mass-public-shooting/

And many more:

http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/

Consider this:  You’re a teacher in charge of a score of little children.  Perhaps you’re sitting in a crowded and dark movie theatre.  Maybe attending any public gathering.  And your faced with some nut-job shooter.  You’re going to only allow yourself sheer terror?  Your going to do nothing but beg for your life or for mercy, while law enforcement may come to rescue you?  Not me.

Consider this contrast –

“Can you imagine a crowded school where two disaffected students fire at students at will, and kill 12 students, because no one at the school is armed? Of course you can, that was Columbine.

Can you imagine a crowded school where a disaffected student fires at students at will, and kills 2 students? But this time, his rampage is halted by a teacher who retrieved his own legal gun from his car? Of course you can, that was Pearl.“

Related:

http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2015/06/columbine-virginia-tech-etc.html

http://oldnfo.org/2015/06/20/guns-and-criminals/

http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2015/06/robert-farago/rolling-stone-weaponized-republicans-responsible-for-charleston-church-shooting/