In this interview Rick Perry calls the Charleston shootings an ‘accident’ caused by drugs, and furthermore accuses President Obama of exploiting the situation! According to Rick ‘Quick Draw’ Perry, President Obama gave into his “knee-jerk” reaction to blame the guns. According to Perry, “Anytime there is an ‘accident’ like this – the President’s clear. He doesn’t like for Americans to have guns.”Perry further claimed; ‘Every time there’s an issue like this, he uses the opportunity to parrot this message.” Gosh, maybe it just seems that way Rick, because we have so gosh derned many gun ‘accidents’ in this country? Sadly, Governor Perry is misinformed (or misinforming) and Obama clearly isn’t planning to grab any guns.
Perry did veer from the official conservative spin, and with reality both. Immediately the official deduction on the Right, was to protest labeling the shooting as a hate crime. .Perry agrees so far. Where Perry and the others split, is on the accepted Christian Persecution theory. Regardless of Dylann Storm Root’s stated racism and hatred, they cling to the old wooden persecution. Perry’s theory names drugs as the culprit. In other words, we have to blame anything but racism or a mad, bad crazy gun culture.
Perry’s stated reason truly flies beyond the bounds of reality. The shooter is not known to be on any drugs for pain, but Perry took a moment to hammer another nail in the coffin of pain sufferers nation-wide and tied it in with the Veteran’s Administration! Perry scored a double whammy by accusing VA doctors of ‘handing out’ massive amounts of opiods…Which isn’t true That didn’t stop Perry from sticking his foot in it further. Perry claimed that because of the opiates in abundance, our returned troops, suffering from horrible physical injuries, aren’t up and working in jobs – preferring to kick back and take pain killers. Keep ’em in pain, that’ll motivate ’em!
But – even if Perry’s accusations were true, is Dylann Storm Root a veteran? Is he on drugs? Would it matter?!
This is the kind of leap and word salad we expect from Perry and Palin, but what a disservice he’s doing to veterans and other Americans in pain. Far from being handed out, pain killers are nearly impossible to obtain, thanks to the war on drugs.
I’ve heard of hopeless pain sufferers taking themselves out with a gun; but I’ve yet to hear of one taking a church full of worshipers out, and cleverly disguising it as racial hatred.