Watch President Barack Obama spoke forcefully and sorrowfully this afternoon about the massacre in a Charleston, South Carolina church that left nine dead last night.
President Barack Obama spoke for eight minutes early this afternoon on the hate crime shooting in a historically Black church last night. The suspect, Dylann Roof, is now in custody, but nine people, including the pastor who was also a state senator, are dead.
After discussing his relationship with Pastor Pickney, one of the victims, the President took the opportunity to speak out about gun violence.
“Until the investigation is complete, I’m necessarily constrained in terms of talking about the details of the case,” the President noted. “But I don’t need to be constrained about the emotions that tragedies like this raise.”
He lamented, “I’ve had to make statements like this too many times. Communities like this have had to endure tragedies like this too many times.”
President Obama noted that not all the facts are yet known, but “once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.” Then he called it a “time for mourning and for healing.”
But he was not willing to ignore the obvious issue of rampant gun violence in America.
“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. I say that recognizing the politics in this town foreclose a lot of those avenues right now. But it would be wrong for us not to acknowledge it. And at some point 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.”
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And he also touched on the racism aspect of the hate crime.
“The fact that this took place in a black church obviously also raises questions about a dark part of our history. This is not the first time that black churches have been attacked. And we know that hatred across races and faiths pose a particular threat to our democracy and our ideals.”
Watch:
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Image: Screenshot via YouTube