Friday, June 19, 2015

Obama calls for reckoning on gun violence after South Carolina hate crime shooting

US President Barack Obama on Thursday expressed anger over a black church massacre in the southeastern US city of Charleston and said the country has to face the fact that rampant gun violence only happens in the United States.
"I don't need to be constraint about the emotions that tragedies like this raise," said Obama in his first speech after the shooting spree at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. "To say our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families ... doesn't say enough to convey the heartache and the sadness and the anger that we feel."

Calling Wednesday night's hate crime shooting that killed nine black people "senseless", Obama said the country has to shift how it thinks about the issue of gun violence collectively.

With a complexion of both sobriety and frustration, Obama said that six and half years into his presidency, he had had to make statements like the one he made on Charleston black church shooting too many times.

"Once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting a gun," he said. "This type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn't happen in other places with this kind of frequency."

Earlier on Thursday, Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white man identified by the police as the suspect, was caught about 14 hours after the shooting in Shelby, North Carolina during a traffic stop, said Charleston police chief Gregory Mullen.

"We have a lot more investigation to do to find out why this happened," said Mullen. ""We don't know if anybody was targeted other than the church itself."

Earlier Thursday, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that the US Justice Department had already opened a hate crime investigation into this shooting at the historic black church.

According to the police, Roof stayed at a prayer meeting for almost one hour Wednesday night before opening fire. A law enforcement official was quoted by the US TV network CNN as saying that witnesses told them that the suspect said he was at the church "to shoot black people."

Nine people, all black, were killed in the shooting spree and three people survived, including a female. She was quoted by local media as saying that the shooter told her he let her live to tell everyone else what happened.

"The only reason someone could walk into church and shoot people praying is out of hate," said Charleston Mayor Joe Riley during a press conference on Wednesday night.

Built in 1891, the church is one of the most prominent black churches in the country and has one of the largest black congregations in the region, said the website of the church.

   Source:Xinhua - globaltimes.cn
19/6/15
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3 comments:

  1. Charleston relatives 'forgive' shooting suspect in court...

    Relatives of some of the nine churchgoers shot dead in South Carolina have addressed the suspected gunman in court and said they forgive him.

    Dylann Roof, 21, appeared in court in Charleston to face nine murder charges.

    He showed no emotion as relatives of the victims addressed him directly. "I forgive you" said one victim's daughter, fighting back tears.

    Police are treating the killings at the African-American church on Wednesday night as a hate crime.

    And the Justice Department says it is investigating whether it might have been an act of domestic terrorism.

    It said in a statement, the shooting was "designed to strike fear and terror into this community", and the department was considering all possibilities.

    At a Charleston sports arena, thousands gathered on Friday evening to remember the victims with prayers and songs....BBC

    ReplyDelete
  2. Charleston shooting investigated as ‘act of domestic terrorism’ ...

    The murders of nine churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, is being investigated by the Justice Department as a possible case of domestic terrorism, a US Justice Department spokeswoman said on Friday.

    “The department is looking at this crime from all angles, including as a hate crime and as an act of domestic terrorism,” Department of Justice spokeswoman Emily Pierce said in a statement.

    The Department of Justice had not previously disclosed that domestic terrorism was one of the avenues being pursued in the federal investigation.

    She added that the department’s investigation is ongoing.

    At a news conference on Thursday, Attorney General Loretta Lynch told reporters all motivations would be considered in determining how best to prosecute the case.

    Suspected shooter Dylann Roof has been charged with nine counts of murder for the mass shooting at a historic black South Carolina church on Wednesday.
    Reuters

    ReplyDelete
  3. U.S. President Barack Obama voiced confidence Friday that a “shocked and heartbroken” nation would eventually tighten permissive gun laws, striking a more strident tone after the deadly Charleston shooting....

    Obama told U.S. mayors in San Francisco that change would come one day, as he took on detractors who accused him of politicizing the deaths of nine black worshippers in South Carolina.

    Describing gun crime as a crisis that “tears at the fabric of a community” and “costs this country dearly,” Obama said: “More than 11,000 Americans were killed by gun violence in 2013 alone. 11,000.”

    He accused Congress of failing to act after a mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012 which killed 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook elementary school.

    “We wouldn't have prevented every act of violence or even most,” Obama said.....AFP....alarabiya.net
    20/6/15

    ReplyDelete

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