There are a few bad arguments being made by people in the gun rights and gun control crowd.
On the gun rights side, the SC shooter legally obtained his gun, specifically from his father on his 21st birthday. So arguments that "bad people will get guns anyway," meaning illegally, are invalid here, no matter how valid the arguments are elsewhere. It was also not a legally "gun-free zone."
On the gun control side, how legally disarming black people -- while white people who obtain guns both legally and illegally, and have plans to murder black people with those guns -- helps blacks is beyond me. While not a legally "gun-free zone," the place was, on the day of the shooting, in practice a gun-free zone, so the net effect was the same. This guy didn't choose a place where he knew black people would be armed. He picked the one place black people would be defenseless in large numbers: church. This is precisely why the NAACP President Cornell Williams Brooks can call him a "coward." He would have had second thoughts before opening fire at a march of armed Black Panthers.
Given the charismatic, energetic and ecstatic nature of many black churches worship services, I personally don't like the idea of people carrying handguns into church, for fear of them accidentally going off. Then again, many of these same churches have security guards. I don't mind them armed.
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