Charleston church massacres reignites gun control debate

In the wake of the mass shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., gun control advocates are calling for a national debate on America’s gun laws, while gun rights activists say the massacre could’ve been prevented had the victims been armed.

“Once again, a senseless act of gun violence has brought terror, tragedy and pain to one of our communities,” former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a gun safety advocate who survived a 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz., said in a statement. “And once again, gunfire and bloodshed has visited one of America’s houses of worship.”

Nine people, including the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a South Carolina state senator, were killed during a Bible study session inside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church Wednesday night when officials say a white gunman, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, opened fire. Investigators are treating the shooting as a hate crime. Roof’s uncle told reporters that the gun the suspected shooter used was given to him by his parents in April for his 21st birthday.

“Once again, innocent people were killed, in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun,” President Barack Obama said at the White House Thursday. “Now is the time for mourning and for healing. But let’s be clear: At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it.”

It was Obama’s 14th statement on a mass shooting since taking office, CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller noted.

“At some point,” Obama added, “it’s going to be important for the American people to come to grips with it and for us to be able to shift how we think about the issue of gun violence collectively.”

But South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a proponent of gun rights, says the gunman — not guns — is to blame.

“Anytime there’s a traumatic situation, they want something to blame — they always want something to go after,” Haley said on NBC’s “Today” show Friday morning. “There’s one person to blame here — a person filled with hate, a person that does not define South Carolina. We are gonna focus on that one person.”

Charles Cotton, a National Rifle Association board member, took it a step further, placing blame on Pinckney for his support of increased gun control measures as a state senator.

“He voted against concealed-carry,” Cotton wrote in an online forum hours after the shooting. “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.”

On Thursday, police in several cities, including Boston and New York, said they were increasing patrols at African-American churches as a precaution.

But on “Fox & Friends,” panel members wondered whether church leaders should be armed, too.

“Should pastors pack heat in church?” host Elisabeth Hasselbeck asked.

“Well, Elisabeth, that’s a great question,” Tim Miller, a former Secret Service agent and a private security training consultant, replied. “I think it is time to take a fresh look at church security across our country. It’s not the churches we grew up in anymore.”

“I would urge pastors at many of these churches to prepare to defend themselves,” Bishop E.W. Jackson said on Fox News Thursday. “It’s sad, but I think we’ve got to arm ourselves.”

The response by gun rights advocates to the Charleston church shooting was reminiscent of the NRA’s response to the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Conn., where 26 people — including 20 children — were killed by a 20-year-old gunman.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said a week after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. “With all the foreign aid the United States does, with all the money in the federal budget, can’t we afford to put a police officer in every single school? ... I call on Congress today to act immediately to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation.

“Every school in America needs to immediately identify, dedicate and deploy the resources necessary to put these security forces in place,” LaPierre added. “And the National Rifle Association, as America’s preeminent trainer of law enforcement and security personnel for the past 50 years ... is ready, willing and uniquely qualified to help.”

[Also read: Obama on Charleston: It’s too easy to get guns in America]

“What happened at Emanuel A.M.E. belongs in another terrible lineage — the modern mass shooting,” the New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb wrote. “We have, quite likely, found at 110 Calhoun Street, in Charleston, South Carolina, the place where Columbine, Aurora, and Newtown cross with Baltimore, Ferguson, and Sanford. We periodically mourn the deaths of a group of Americans who die at the hands of another armed American. We periodically witness racial injustices that inspire anger in the streets. And sometimes we witness both. This is, quite simply, how we now live.”

Wednesday night's shooting left “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart virtually jokeless on Thursday.

“What blows my mind is the disparity of response between when we think people that are foreign are going to kill us, and us killing ourselves,” Stewart said. “If this had been what we thought was Islamic terrorism, it would fit into our ‘We invaded two countries and spent trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives and now fly unmanned death machines over five or six different countries, all to keep Americans safe. We got to do whatever we can. We’ll torture people. We gotta do whatever we can to keep Americans safe.’ Nine people shot in a church. What about that? ‘Hey, what are you gonna do? Crazy is as crazy is, right?’ That’s the part that I cannot, for the life of me, wrap my head around.”