On this weekend’s broadcast of “The McLaughlin Group,” conservative commentator Pat Buchanan said while there was a racial component to last week’s mass killing in Charleston, SC at the Emanuel AME Church, it more closely resembles incidents like Tucson, Columbine, Aurora and Newtown and not the organized anti-civil rights efforts of the 1960s.
“I’m not sure it is, John,” Buchanan replied. “There’s no doubt there was a racial aspect here. This guy drives a hundred miles to go to a black church, which is having a Wednesday night meeting and sits there, kills black people and uses the language he did. But I see this less in the legacy of the Birmingham bombing in 1963 where those Klansman went in there and deliberately blew up those little black girls.”
“I see this more in terms of Tucson, Columbine and Aurora and Newtown, and the Navy Yard here,” he continued. “These young guys – this guy is hopped out on this suboxone or whatever it is drug and he’s aggressive and he’s angry. The motivation may have been racial, but I think it’s one of those mass murders and massacres. And they mention it was a tragedy. It’s not so much a tragedy. It’s a horrendous atrocity.”
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