“That is what has to stop,” he said.
Rutherford is right, but what also has to stop is this: Family members giving guns to relatives who they suspect could be mentally unstable. A man who identified himself as Roof’s uncle earlier told Reuters that Roof’s father had recently given him a .45-caliber handgun as a birthday gift and that he had seemed troubled.
“I actually talked to him on the phone briefly for just a few moments and he was saying, ‘Well, I’m outside practicing with my new gun’,” the uncle, Carson Cowles, 56, said in a telephone interview with The Wall Street Journal.
My friend left for Charleston today to comfort his sister, to speak with members of Emanuel AME Church, and to chronicle this tragic shooting that occurred in a church known as “Mother Bethel,” the oldest AME church in the South.
While many Americans grieve for the families who lost loved ones in this senseless rampage, know this: The doors of Emanuel AME Church will open on Sunday morning to honor their fallen friends and to offer hope and spiritual guidance to those who need faith — just as they’ve done since the early 1800s.
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Mother Bethel Will Survive Shooting, But Will America? was originally published on blackamericaweb.com
