By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
President Barack Obama’s quick move to exploit the tragic shooting in Charleston, S.C. may have left him with egg on his face, not only for pushing gun control almost immediately, but for his astonishing disregard for history regarding mass-victim attacks around the globe.
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UPDATE: CNN is now reporting that Roof has apparently told investigators that he personally purchased the .45-caliber pistol in April with money he got for his birthday. That runs counter to earlier reports that the gun had been a birthday gift from his father. It also raises questions about whether information about an earlier unrelated arrest in February was entered into the National Instant Check System (NICS). If it had been, Roof should not have been able to clear a background check at the Charleston gun shop where the purchase allegedly was made.
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“Let’s be clear,” the president said during a press briefing. “At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency.”
But that’s not exactly true, as even a cursory glance at events over the past 30 years confirmed. Just as quickly as the president made that argument in support of more gun control, Second Amendment activists were firing right back with a rundown of horrific crimes in other “advanced countries” with tougher gun laws than most of the United States.
Not only did the president ignore the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris in January, he equally overlooked the July 2011 attack in Norway in which Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in two separate attacks, eight with a bomb and 69 with gunfire. That incident happened during Obama’s first term.
A list of the most notorious incidents was assembled by one member of the Northwest Firearms forum, a popular website for gun owners and activists in Washington, Oregon and Northern Idaho.
Among these attacks was the shooting in April 2009 in Baku, Azerbaijan where 12 people died, another in September 2008 in Kauhajoki, Finland where ten people were killed and a third in November 2007 in Tuusula, Finland in which eight people were murdered.
In addition, there was an April 2002 Erfurt, Germany attack in which an 18-year-old killed more than a dozen teachers, one policeman and two former classmates at a school. The Port Arthur, Australia attack in April 1996, in which Martin Bryant killed 35 people and wounded 23 others, led to the infamous gun control crackdown on the Island Continent. A month earlier in Dunblane, Scotland, Thomas Hamilton murdered 16 kindergartners and a teacher, resulting in the handgun ban in the United Kingdom.
In March 1987, mass-killer Michael Ryan murdered 16 people in Hungerford, England before turning the gun on himself.
Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton also engaged in gun control politicking just as quickly as Obama, in remarks she made on the morning after the church shooting. At an event in Las Vegas, she stated, “We have to face hard truths about race, violence, guns and division… How many innocent people in our country from little children, church members to movie theater attendees, how many people do we need to see cut down before we act?”
While the president and Mrs. Clinton focused on gun control, they both overlooked the fact that the accused killer, Dylann Storm Roof, 21, had already allegedly violated several existing laws, not the least of which is multiple homicides. He was also charged with illegal gun possession.
Roof also apparently illegally carried a handgun concealed into a church, which is a crime in South Carolina. He was arrested in Shelby, N.C. about 250 miles northwest from Charleston, about 12 hours after the shooting. Police reportedly found a .45-caliber Glock pistol in his car.
