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A Look at Two Mass Killings

It's been almost a year since Dylann Roof murdered nine people during a Bible study at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. It's been less than two days since Omar Mateen murdered 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

What do the two incidents have in common, other than being horrific acts committed by mentally disturbed individuals with extreme ideologies?

If you read World Net Daily (WND), the answer is clear: They are President Obama's fault.

Immediately following the Charleston shooting, Larry Klayman opined at WND that the president was at fault for promoting a "climate of violence that is sharpening conflicts instead of soothing them". As evidence, Klayman adpoted the shooter's own words:

Roof was quoted as saying that he struck because blacks had "taken over the country."

Because if you can't take the words of a deranged ideologue at face value, then how can you be certain about anything?

But this weekend, writers for the same WND are expressing concerns that the president hasn't been divisive enough. Bob Unruh frets, "Obama throughout his presidency has refused to say the words Islamic terrorism or radical Islamic terrorism." Cheryl Chumley quotes conspiracy buff Alex Jones as saying, "Our governments are bringing these people in and they’re allowing them to operate openly in our society, so they can attack us and then have our freedoms taken."

But was this shooting really about Islam? In an interview with NBC News, Mir Seddique—the killer's father—suggests a very different motivation.

"We were in Downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music. And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry," Seddique told the network.

He saw two men kissing, so he murdered 49 people.

What do Omar Mateen and Dylann Roof have in common?

They were so blinded by their ideologies that they failed to see their victims as human beings. In this, they are not so different from the writers at WND.

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