Rick Perry Takes Just Hours To Prove Jon Stewart Correct About Charleston Massacre
Potential Republican party presidential candidate Rick Perry has taken just days to prove Jon Stewart correct about the U.S. reaction to the latest mass murder to take place on American soil. As reported by the Inquisitr, Perry was roundly criticized after referring to the Charleston massacre as “an accident.” Perry, who recently announced that he would seek the GOP nomination for next years presidential election, used a speech on Friday to make political capital from a mass murder.
Earlier this week, The Daily Show host Jon Stewart told viewers that “some people were already working hard to discount the idea that racism was the motive behind the massacre.” It took former Texas Governor Rick Perry just hours to prove that Stewart was correct. Speaking in an interview on Friday, Perry said that the cold-blooded murder of nine black people in a South Carolina church was a “drug-induced accident.”
A spokesperson for Perry later claimed that Perry had meant to say “incident” rather than “accident,” but the real point is that Perry tried to deflect the focus away from race and guns. Perry also used the horrors of Charleston to attack calls for gun control made by President Obama in the wake of yet another massacre. By doing so, Perry seems to prove Stewart correct when he says “even if the culture if racist violence is looked at seriously, we still won’t do jack***t.”
The Guardian reports that Perry moved the debate over Charleston away from racism and gun control by claiming that the “real issue to be talked about” is drugs. KXAN report that Perry also used the interview to attack Obama’s calls for tighter gun control, saying “the president’s clear, he doesn’t like for Americans to have guns.” Perry went on to insist the issue at hand is not gun control — it’s drug control.
Incredibly, the massacre of nine innocents in a Charleston church was the 14th similar incident since Obama took office in 2009. The UK, which has much stricter gun controls, has had just three such incidents in the last 50 years.
Perry is a staunch supporter of the NRA and an opponent of gun control, although he lost his own right to carry a handgun.
According to the Independent, Perry said, “I’m a big believer that if you have citizens who are armed, know how to use weapons, they can protect themselves when evil does show up at their door.”
Perry ignores the fact that the weapons used in almost all of the mass murders on U.S. soil are legally held. Perry’s stance seems to support Jon Stewart’s view that Americans find it more convenient to pretend they don’t understand the issues that racism and gun culture create. We prefer to say, “I don’t get it. What happened? This one guy lost his mind.”
[Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images]
