(Newswire.net — June 22, 2015) — More guns – less violence is a familiar refrain from gun advocacy groups that believe that if everyone was armed, murderers would think twice before using their weapons. In the latest scandalous statements, a National Rifle Association official blamed the slain pastor’s anti-gun position for the massacre at a South Carolina church, the New York Post reported.
According to Post, Charles Cotton, a board member with the National Rifle Association group (NRA), noted that pastor and state Sen. Clementa Pinckney voted against the concealed-carry gun legislation.
“Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in the church are dead. Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue,” Cotton wrote on texasCHLforum.com.
Reportedly, Pinckney last year voted against permitting the concealed carrying of handguns in eateries that serve alcohol and he introduced legislation for stricter background checks for gun owners.
Texas State Rifle Association leader Cotton was heavily criticised after he wrote in February that disciplining a child by corporal punishment may prevent him from “having to put a bullet in him later.”
Meanwhile, Dylann Storm Roof, 21, who is accused of gunning down Pinckney and eight other worshippers during Bible study Wednesday night at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, allegedly started a website named lastrhodesian.com which implied he planned the killings for months.
Though Storm Roof stated he didn’t grow up in a racist environment, documents revealed in Charleston Church Massacre case revealed he has numerous racist statements in his posts.
In the racial manifesto, which surfaced Monday, Roof allegedly explained that he chose Charleston for his attack because “it is most historic city in my state” and that it has “the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country.”
Roof further wrote that someone “has to have the bravery” to take the city “to the real world“. “I guess that has to be me,” wrote the shooter.
Dalton Tyler, who earlier told AP that the suspect had been “planning something like that for six months,” said that Roof was “big into segregation and other stuff.”
“He said he wanted to start a civil war. He said he was going “to do something like that and then kill himself,” Tyler said, Russia Today reported.