A few days before Thanksgiving, Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce noted that the United States was “sitting on a powder keg.” Three days after that post was published, a white man shot up a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, and, five days after that, a Muslim couple shot up a center for the developmentally disabled in San Bernardino, California. Speaking during Friday morning convocation at Liberty University, a Southern Baptist college in Lynchburg, Virginia, Jerry Falwell, Jr., the school’s chancellor, closed his address by commenting on one of those two events.
“If some of those people in that community center had had what I’ve got in my back pocket right now [applause] … is it illegal to pull it out? I don’t know. I’ve always thought that if more people had concealed carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walk in and kill. So, I just want to take this opportunity to encourage all of you to get your permit. We offer a free course. Let’s teach ’em a lesson if they ever show up here.”
Falwell, Jr., whose university requires all students to take a course in Creationism in order to graduate, did not make a call to action to “end” the life of Robert Lewis Dear, the 57-year-old Colorado Springs shooter. To be sure, a local ABC affiliate noted that Falwell, Jr., claims he meant to use the word “terrorists,” instead.
After the revelation that the female shooter had pledged allegiance to ISIS before carrying out the shooting, most of the country is now referring to San Bernardino as a “terrorist attack.” And yet, what happened at Planned Parenthood is labeled a “mass shooting.” What happened in Charleston was a “mass shooting.” But the people holding those guns, like Falwell Jr., were white.
In Falwell, Jr.’s America, can a white person be a terrorist?
WHAT DO YOU THINK?