Fox News: Gun-Free Zones Committed That Hate Crime In Charleston

That was fast! It only took a few hours for Fox to toss up an editorial explaining that the best explanation of why six women and three men were shot to death in their church Wednesday night is that nobody in the church was packing heat like they should have been.

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Professional gunhumper and FoxNews.com columnist John R. Lott explains:

The horrible tragedy last night that left nine people dead at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., probably could have been avoided. Like so many other attacks, the massacre took place in a gun-free zone, a place where the general public was banned from having guns. The gun-free zone obviously didn’t stop the killer from bringing a gun into the church.

It has the look of a ready-made editorial that, like a prewritten obituary for an aging celebrity, was just waiting for the next mass shooting -- because in U.S. America, there's always a "next mass shooting" on the way. The Charleston massacre is mentioned only in the first and last paragraphs, and the rest is boilerplate about how Bad Guys always choose "soft targets" where they know no one will be shooting back at them. There's not a single word about the fact that it was allegedly a white racist murdering people in a black church. If the shooting had taken place at a school or a mall, everything else in the editorial would be identical, explaining that until it's legal for everyone to carry a gun everywhere, we can look forward to more mass killings, and also the liberal media never covers the brave heroes with concealed weapons who do stop mass shootings all the time. (Since he could only find a few examples, he had to link to the same incident in at least two different spots in the editorial.)

Oh, but that last paragraph is a doozy:

Churches, like the one in Charleston, preach peace, but the killer there probably chose that target because he knew the victims were defenseless.

As Jesus said, "But I tell you, you must resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, blow them away with your concealed Glock." Because we need guns in church. What could go wrong? 

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And let's just review South Carolina's actual handgun laws, courtesy of Ben Cohen at the Daily Banter:  

There is a reason gun massacres do not occur on a regular basis in other industrialized countries around the world, and it is because you can’t buy guns at the local store in every town, and don’t have a right to own military grade weapons in your house. In South Carolina, you don’t need a permit to cary [sic] long guns or hand guns, don’t need to register your firearm, and don’t have any restrictions on magazine capacity. In fact, there aren’t actually any specified age restrictions for purchasing a gun, and the law permits non-residents to buy rifles or shotguns in the state.

So South Carolina is a pretty gun-friendly place. How gun friendly? This morning's edition of the Charleston Post and Courier   went out with a discount coupon for a shooting range right above the headline about the massacre:

A free t-shirt! Better get out to the gun range and get that thing signed and dated -- it'll be worth something on eBay!

The paper has explained that it was a "deeply regrettable coincidence" and apologized "to those who were offended"

But as we say, South Carolina really loves guns and the Second Amendment. In fact, last fall, Gov. Nikki Haley said that she was perfectly OK with perpetrators of domestic violence having guns, although to her credit, earlier this month she finally did sign a bill that included a ban on gun possession by people convicted of severe domestic abuse. The law still allows less serious offenders to have their carry rights restored, though. And even that watered-down legislation was condemned by gun humpers as a "gun grab."

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And yet, with all that friendliness to guns, nobody at the church was ready to blow away a stranger who seemed to have come to pray with them. Clearly, Christians need more guns. More guns are always the answer.

[ Fox News / The Daily Banter / Post And Courier / Mediaite ]