Yes, Mentally Ill Racist Gay Black Men Can Be Killers, Too

[Truth In Media Reporting]

In the aftermath of Dylann Roof’s racist murders in Charleston,
the Internet was deluged with think pieces about whiteness,
white privilege, white racism, and the legacy of American racial
injustice. While Roof’s individual agency in the murders was
acknowledged, his actions were deemed inseparable not just from
America’s gun culture but also from its racist past. Flags had
to come down, statues had to be toppled, and even Confederate
bones had to be exhumed.

What narrative will prevail after yesterday’s horrific shooting
in Virginia? Vester Lee Flanagan, a gay black man, was every bit
as race-obsessed as Roof. Former colleagues report a long
history of unhinged behavior on Flanagan’s part. The anecdotes
stretch back for years.

As the Daily Beast reported, he “kept getting fired, kept
threatening co-workers, and kept claiming he was the real
victim” of racism and homophobia. But rather than hurting his
career, one former colleague said that his race and sexual
orientation gave him new chances: “The fact that he kept his job
was because he was an African-American gay man. That’s pretty
hard to say no to.”

So is the proper response to yesterday’s shooting an extended
meditation on blackness, gayness, affirmative action, and black
or gay rage? Should there now be a cultural hunt for symbols or
expressions of that rage or a quest to batter history into
submission until it tells only the stories we want to tell?

After all, police reportedly confiscated a “gay pride flag” from
his home. Yet for the Left, yesterday’s brutal murders are all
about guns. They present yet another opportunity to “shame”
lawmakers into passing legislation that limits Americans’
constitutional rights — legislation that would have done nothing
to prevent Flanagan from killing his victims.

You want background checks? Flanagan reportedly passed a
background check. You want to keep crazy people from owning
guns? So far there’s no evidence that any entity, anywhere,
adjudicated Flanagan as insane, and while portions of his
manifesto indicate that he believed he heard from Jehovah,
others demonstrate that he knew full well what he was doing. He
was more than capable of discerning right from wrong.

Roof’s murders weren’t about guns or “whiteness.” Flanagan’s
murders aren’t about guns or “blackness.” They’re about evil,
and no demographic — no matter its history — is immune to evil.
The alleged privilege of whiteness doesn’t make a man a killer.
The alleged oppression of blackness doesn’t make a man a killer.
Guns don’t make a man a killer. The man makes himself a killer.
He is solely responsible for his actions.

The most effective cultural and political response to killings
like Flanagan’s — and killings like Roof’s — is to assign
responsibility and enact policies that reflect man’s individual
fallen nature.

We decry mass incarceration — and we do need to think hard about
whether so many Americans need to be in prison — but no one
credible is arguing that we’ve engaged in mass incarceration of
the innocent.

The Left decries increasingly “lax” gun laws as enabling attacks
like Flanagan’s, yet those very same laws place the means of
self-defense in the hands of individuals who are actually at the
scene of the crime as it happens.

Indeed, the era of aggressive policing, tougher sentencing,
increased prison populations, and less restrictive gun laws is
also the era of dramatically reduced violent crime, including
gun crime. Yes, black lives matter. Think of the tens of
thousands of black men and women alive today because of the
decreased crime rate.

Radically revising our approaches to policing, incarceration,
and gun ownership because they haven’t eliminated crime entirely
is the equivalent of getting rid of anti-lock brakes and air
bags because they haven’t ended traffic fatalities.

In the Left’s upside-down fantasy, proven solutions become part
of the problem: Somehow, the world is safer with fewer
Confederate flags flying, more criminals on the streets, and
fewer opportunities to defend ourselves against them.

But the problem isn’t policy or history or symbols. It’s people.
As if we needed any reminder, yesterday’s events showed that
anyone can be a vicious, murderous bigot, regardless of their
race, their sexual orientation, or the flags they hang in their
home.

— David French is an attorney and a staff writer at National
Review.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/423181/vester-lee-flanagan-
murders-race-sexual-orientation-guns-evil

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Illegal alien muslim Barack Hussein Obama seizes on this tragedy
caused by one of his mentally ill homosexual, black racist
supporters, to wave the flags for more gun control.