Five slain white officers equals one perplexed President caught in his own rhetoric

The spokesman for a gun-rights organization says it’s revealing that President Barack Obama is blaming firearms, and not racism, for the July 8 ambush that killed five Dallas police officers.

Meanwhile, the targeting and murder of police officers reminds us that law and order is under assault, says a religious leader.

President Obama condemned the “despicable attack” carried out by Micah Johnson, a U.S. Army veteran and black militant, who targeted white police officers during a Black Lives Matter march.

The Washington Times noted that President Obama failed to acknowledge that Johnson was motived by race but he did claim that being armed with “powerful weapons” makes such attacks “more deadly.”

It’s not clear what firearm Johnson used. Initial news reports stated he used an SKS, a 1950’s-era military rifle used by the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries. Later reports suggest he may have been armed with some variant of the AK-47 rifle, which replaced the SKS.

Regarding the racial motives for the killings, Obama suggested it was hard to “untangle the motives” of the shooter, the Times noted, which was reporting on the President’s weekend speech from Poland.

Yet the gunman told police during their gun battle with him that he was targeting white police officers, the Timesalso reported.

Conservative website RedState noted that President Obama quickly condemned the 2015 church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, pointing out last year that it happened in a black church. In a eulogy for the shooting victims, Obama said the Confederate flag “must come down.”

Yet the website noticed that President Obama claimed over the weekend that people didn’t make any assumptions about what motivated the “white kid” who killed black churchgoers, and should apply that non-assumption to the Dallas shooter and his motivations.

Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America says blaming a firearm means ignoring that Johnson was “filled with murderous hate” while he was armed.

Johnson’s attack is a hate crime, says Pratt, who doubts the Left will describe it as such, since the victims were white and Johnson is black.

“What these people are trying to do is racialize crime,” Pratt says of the Left, “and I don’t think that’s helpful. Crime is crime. It comes out of sinful hearts. And we’ve got to deal with it, recognizing that that’s the way some people are.”

Meanwhile, Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy says the Dallas attack goes much deeper than a racially motivated murder.

“An attack on police is not just an assault upon individuals,” Tooley observes. “It is an assault on society. And it’s a framework of public order and therefore has a much wider meaning and is far more dangerous.”

Christian doctrine, Tooley points out, teaches that civil authorities are ordained by God to maintain and uphold order, and to punish evil.

When that civil authority is attacked, he says, “we need to respond with courage and persistence and prayer, and with hope for the future and confidence that the future is ultimately in God’s hands.”

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