Larry Elder: This Is NOT 1963, Mr. President

Almost immediately after a white killer gunned down nine black worshipers at a historic church in Charleston, South Carolina, 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. South Carolina 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 did not pull out a Confederate flag and use it to kill people. He used a .45. Also, he had flags of apartheid South Africa and separatist Rhodesia. Ban them, too?

President Barack 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 that state’s basic qualification requirements – things like age, training, no criminal history, etc. – the state will not deny you a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

Permit holders, however, cannot bring a firearm to a “house of worship.” Whether the confessed Charleston killer, Dylann Roof, knew this, we don’t know. We do know that one of Roof’s friends said Roof wanted to attack a local college. But, according to the friend, Roof switched targets because of the security around the school. If the school security deterred the killer, might allowing concealed carry in a “house of worship” have a similar effect?

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