The Caveat

In my previous post I said that my initial reaction was that I didn't think that gun laws could stop Dylann Roof's terrorist attack on the church in Charleston. But as I've considered it, I'm not so sure. Roof was on the cops' radar, and if he hadn't been white, things likely would have played out differently.

In particular:

Mr. Roof has had two previous brushes with the law, both in recent months, according to court records. In February, he attracted attention at the Columbiana Centre, a shopping mall, when, dressed all in black, he asked store employees “out of the ordinary questions” such as how many people were working and what time they would be leaving, according to a police report.

Clearly the cops suspected Roof was casing the mall for some sort of burglary or other nefarious activity. If he'd been black and caught doing this, what are the odds they would have just let him go on his way?

Buying a gun should require a license, practical testing and a rigorous background investigation. Roof's suspicious behavior at the mall is exactly the kind of thing that should show up on a criminal background check. The logical conclusion is that Roof was trying to buy a gun to commit a robbery.

That shouldn't prevent a person from getting a gun out of hand. But it should trigger a deeper investigation. They should talk to his family and friends. Had the authorities done that, they might have remarked upon his recent racist behavior. Had they checked him out on the Internet, they might have learned of his racist sympathies from his Facebook page, which might have led them to his Last Rhodesian white supremacist web site, where he divulged his racist plan to attack Charleston.

That level of investigation would cost money, of course. Which means a gun license would have to cost a fair amount of money. Which might have prevented Roof from getting a gun in the first place.

Admittedly, that's a lot of ifs. But as we already know, it's impossible to prevent all murders. But the higher the bar is for gun purchases, the fewer guns will be sold, especially to angry losers like Dylann Roof.

The only possible goal is to reduce the number of deaths without imposing undue burdens on the rest of society. Making sure that gun buyers aren't white supremacists planning to rob malls or murder old black ladies in church isn't an unreasonable burden.

Now, suppose Dylann Roof had been a Muslim. What do you think the cops' reaction at the mall would have been? A Muslim skulking around a mall, wearing black, asking questions about employees and closing times. They would instantly suspect he's preparing for a terrorist attack, looking to sneak into the mall after hours to plant a bomb. If they didn't arrest him for this on the spot, at a minimum they would have placed him on a watch list, which would have been flagged when he tried to buy a gun.

American conservatives are more than willing to allow the authorities to invade our privacy by x-raying us, rifling through our personal belongings and making us take off our god-damned shoes every time we board an airplane.

Yet somehow they think everyone in the country should have complete and untrammeled access to weapons of mass murder at their local gun stores. They can shoot up churches and schools and malls with impunity -- why would any terrorist bother with an airplane anymore?

NRA people don't seem to understand that lax gun laws they insist upon also allow Muslim terrorists to obtain guns easily -- just like the guns Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem provided the jihadists who were killed in the Muhammad cartoon ambush contest in Texas last month.