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Earlier today, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch declared that acts such as the mass murder of worshippers in a black church in Charleston, allegedly by a man fond of white supremacist symbols, "have no place in a civilized society."
She's right, of course. But a reasonable case can be made that South Carolina is less a civilized society than a predator's paradise.
In a civilized society, people have some assurance that laws, and the agents who enforce those laws, will shield them from predators, protecting the weak being the essence of civilization.
But even leaving aside its ugly history of race relations — the Confederate flag still flies in front of the state capital in Columbia — South Carolina, like many other U.S. states, is a place where the love of guns trumps the protection of innocents.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Centre, the state is home to 19 hate groups, including active Ku Klux Klan chapters. It is also one of only five states that have no hate crimes law.
In South Carolina, you don't need a permit to buy a gun — pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, whatever.
South Carolina law buys into the "stand your ground" defence, meaning you have a legal right to kill anyone you think is a threat. It also lets you kill anybody you think is a threat to somebody else.
In other words, it officially encourages vigilante behaviour...
For its part, the NRA was keeping a discreet silence, as it usually does after mass gun murders. (Its website, bizarrely, carried the picture of a black man, and this quote: "No law abiding American should be forced to face evil with empty hands.")
But if the NRA's post-Newtown declaration was any guide, let me predict what it will say about South Carolina.
It will call it a "terrible tragedy," and it will say the whole thing could have been averted had the worshippers only been armed with sufficiently powerful weapons themselves.
It will probably also urge church leaderships across America to, at the very least, to arm and train pastors and deacons, and it will offer any advice or facilities needed for that.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/charleston ... -1.3119108