September's Tennessee Church Shooting Reportedly In Retaliation For SC Black Church Massacre

Photo by Josh Hallett

In many cases, we don’t hear much about a mass shooting after it’s over. We still don’t know the motive for the Las Vegas gunman, for example.

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Yet, just a single week earlier, a good guy with a gun stopped a mass shooting in a Tennessee church. The assailant, a black immigrant from the Sudan, had a number of posts on his social media denoting a strong Christian faith…but also many that took a harsh stance on what he saw as racism in this country. Still, we didn’t know his motive.

Of course, it turns out that the motive was known. It just didn’t a lot of attention in the press.

Law enforcement officials say a note found in the car of a man charged in a Tennessee church shooting referenced retaliation for a white supremacist’s massacre at a black church two years ago in Charleston, South Carolina.

Investigators are not saying what motivated [the killer] to shoot churchgoers Sunday. But the note could offer a glimpse into his mindset. The Associated Press has not viewed the note, but it was summarized in an investigative report circulating among law enforcement.

So where was this news? This report is dated September 29, two days before the Las Vegas shooting. Why didn’t this get some play by the national media?

It couldn’t have been because no one would care. The motive behind the 2014 Isla Vista rampage killings, for example, became the topic of conversation for quite some time. His misogynistic ramblings were almost everywhere.

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The same is true of the Pulse Orlando shooting last year. The killer in that incident had his motivations fully discussed.

Why would this case be any different?

Now, had this report come out October 2nd, no one would think anything of it. We had bigger things to talk about than the shooting a week earlier. We had 58 dead and over 500 wounded. A lack of reports on this then would have made some sense. Tennessee was old news at that point.

But it wasn’t. It was two days before, still plenty of time for the national media to have picked it up and run with it. So why didn’t they?

It couldn’t possibly be because it might paint a negative light on movements and rhetoric the left ostensibly supports, now could it? A biased media simply doesn’t exist, or so we’re repeatedly told. They report the news. Nothing more, nothing less.

Yet again, I ask, why wasn’t this story made national? Don’t tell me it wasn’t news. Don’t tell me no one cared either.

The least cynical answer I can concoct is that whoever saw it didn’t figure it was important, but even that is an example of their bias clouding their sense of the news. The idea of a black man looking to murder white people in a church in retaliation for a previous murder they had nothing to do with. How is this not important?

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But I find it hard to believe it wasn’t a case of no one wanting to upset the narrative. A black man shooting up a church, well…they have to cover that. However, they don’t have to advertise the fact that it was a racially motivated crime, probably based on emotions inflamed by the media’s constant narrative of a racist United States.

Sure, there will be excuses, but anyone can see the reality. This was news, and the national media did nothing with it.

 

Hat tip: Gun Watch

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