First things first: Like every human being with a living soul, I abhor the violence that took place yesterday in Charleston, South Carolina.<\/p>\n
While one can expect the Obama Justice Department’s to politicize this episode for all it’s worth (more later), in this case the\u00a0hate crime investigation seems entirely warranted; the alleged shooter, who seems at first glance to be a fairly demented young man, gives off a lot of the surface signs of being motivated by some form of racial hatred or another, rather than mere insanity.<\/p>\n
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The alleged shooter, Mr. Roof, reportedly went to great lengths to avoid alarming his targets, apparently even participating in a Bible study for an hour before opening fire.<\/p>\n
So the situation doesn’t compare, entirely, with the one in 2007, at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs; there, the shooter, A demented person motivated by hatred of Christianity barged into the service with guns blazing, killing one before being shot by a volunteer civilian security guard Jeanne Assam.<\/p>\n
And yet it remains unalterably true that the best way to stop a mass shooting is to shoot back. \u00a0One person with a legal, concealed firearm, putting up even token resistance, is almost invariably enough to stop a mass shooting before it becomes a mass shooting. \u00a0Even Columbine, horrible as it was, was likely contained from being much worse by the intervention of an armed sheriffs deputy working school security; this blog has covered \u00a0other episodes of mass shootings derailed by armed citizens.<\/p>\n