UPDATED – Rick Perry: Charleston Church Shooting Was A Drug-Related ‘Accident’ (Video)

2016 Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry today blamed the death of nine Black churchgoers shot to death by a young white man on drugs, not guns.

Blasting President Barack Obama‘s brief speech on the massacre at Charleston, South Carolina’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Rick Perry opted to try to change the direction of the nation’s discussion from guns and race to drugs. The former Republican Texas governor also oddly chose to classify the slaughter of nine Black churchgoers praying at a Wednesday night Bible study class as an “accident.”

Editor’s note: The Perry campaign says the governor misspoke. See update below.

During the President’s comments yesterday, he lamented that guns are easily obtained. Noting that not all the facts are yet known, President Obama said, “once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.” 

EARLIER: (Heart)Breaking Video: In Court, Victims’ Family Members Tell Charleston Shooter ‘I Forgive You’

Governor Perry, talking with Newsmax TV’s Steve Malzberg, took serious objection to those remarks, accusing the president of using the attack as an opportunity to bring up gun control.

“This is the MO [modus operandi] of this administration, any time there is an accident like this — the president is clear, he doesn’t like for Americans to have guns and so he uses every opportunity, this being another one, to basically go parrot that message,” Perry accused.

So Perry used the opportunity to try to move the conversation away from guns – the shooter reportedly had received a gun for his birthday this year – and on to drugs. Roof has a small arrest record related to drugs.

“I think there is a real issue to be talked about. It seems to me, again without having all the details about this, that these individuals have been medicated and there may be a real issue in this country from the standpoint of these drugs and how they’re used,” Perry said. The Huffington Post reported that “instead of discussing the racial motives, he suggested not enough people were talking about Roof’s previous drug arrest.”

As Right Wing Watch notes, Perry had “said that such drugs are responsible for high suicide and joblessness rates.”

He also said that “there are a lot of issues underlying this that I think we as a country need to have a conversion about rather than just the knee-jerk reaction of saying, ‘If we can just take all the guns away, this won’t happen.'”

Oddly, Perry also seemed to try to downplay the severity of the attack. Asked if it was terrorism, he said he didn’t know, “but I think the facts, once we get them – there were more people than that killed in Paris.”

Raw Story notes that Perry was “changing the subject to the Charlie Hebdo attacks, which claimed 12 lives.

Watch:

UPDATE 5:54 PM EDT –
In a just-published article, Business Insider reports that a Perry campaign advisor says the governor misspoke.

“When watching the entire interview, it’s clear from the context of his comments that Governor Perry meant incident,” said the adviser, Lexi Stemple.

Neither Governor Perry nor Newsmax anchor Steve Malzberg seemed to have a problem with the characterization as “accident.” It was only after dozens of media outlets reported it that the campaign thought it important to correct the record. 

 

RELATED:

Jeb Bush: ‘I Don’t Know’ If The Charleston Church Shooting Was Racially Motivated

Santorum: ‘Indiscriminate’ Massacre Of Black Churchgoers By White Man ‘Assault On Religious Liberty’

‘This Wasn’t A Tornado, This Was A Racist’: Jon Stewart Drops Comedy For Charleston Shooting

 

Image: Screenshot via NewsMaxTV/YouTube
Video: Right Wing Watch