Right after a white killer gunned down nine black worshippers at a historic church in Charleston, S.C., out came the politics.
On the Capitol grounds in Columbia flies the battlefield flag of Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, often erroneously called the "Confederate flag." Right after the shooting, calls came for the flag's removal.
Gov. Nikki Haley, until now, had defended the compromise that moved the flag in 2000 from the Capitol dome, where it had flown since 1962, to a nearby Confederate soldier memorial on the statehouse grounds.
The killer didn't pull out a Confederate flag and use it to kill people. He used a .45. He also had flags of apartheid South Africa and separatist Rhodesia. Ban them, too?
President Obama took the opportunity to make the case for additional gun-control legislation. "We don't have all the facts," he said, "but we do know that once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun."
OK, now that Obama mentions it, suppose one or more of the churchgoers had been armed? South Carolina is one of 40 states that allow citizens to carry a concealed weapon on a "shall issue" basis, meaning that as long as you pass basic qualification requirements — age, training, no criminal history, etc. — the state will not deny you a permit to carry a concealed weapon.
Permit holders, however, can't bring a firearm to a "house of worship." Whether Dylann Roof, who's reportedly confessed to being the Charleston killer, knew this, we don't know.
We do know that one of Roof's friends said he wanted to attack a local college. But, according to the friend, Roof switched targets because of the security around the school. If the school's security deterred Roof, might allowing concealed carry in a "house of worship" have a similar effect?
How about we spend a little time on whether someone could have and should have said something to someone? Roof apparently told people of his intentions to start a "race war" — and at at least some friends knew he possessed a .45.
Obama said the tragedy reminds us "we've got a lot of work to do." He spoke of the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Ala., where four black girls were killed and nearly two dozen people wounded. But the differences between Birmingham in 1963 and Charleston in 2015 are staggering.
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