Underneath all of the noisy news this week about Trump's tax cheating and Brett Kavanaugh's pending confirmation vote, a thing happened. A bad thing. In South Carolina, seven cops were shot and one died.
It happened in an upscale neighborhood. A police officer went to serve a warrant on a resident in the neighborhood and was met with a barrage of bullets. Terrence Carraway was killed during the 2-hour standoff with the 74-year old resident who lived there.
A source with the Florence County Sheriff's Office told ABC News on Thursday that the detained suspect is Fred Hopkins, who was at the home where the shooting happened in Vintage Place, an upscale suburban neighborhood in the city of Florence, about 80 miles east of Columbia.
Hopkins allegedly began shooting at Florence County deputies when they showed up to serve a search warrant for another individual at the residence Wednesday. There were four foster children inside the home at the time of the incident, the source told ABC News.
The sheriff's office had been called to the home several times before, the source said. Deputies were there to serve a warrant for sexual assault allegations against a minor in the house, according to the source.
It turns out Hopkins is a member of the NRA and a gun owner/collector. It sure sounds like he had an AR-15 there to shoot some cops. But you know, the NRA has always viewed cop shooting as something attributable to Black people, not upper middle class white dudes.
Their TV guy, Grant Stinchfield, was casting about for someone else to blame besides aging white NRA members with a lot of guns, and came up with this:
Putting on a badge is like putting on a target. The rich tradition of serving as a law officer has been tarnished by the media and the left. Worse than officers being shamed by leftists raging against authority, they are now all often being targeted. Brave officers in Florence, South Carolina, faced a shooter hellbent on killing them all. The shooter hit seven officers who had been called to a home to make an arrest. He was holding children hostage. The shooter had an advantage over the officers and rained bullets over them.
Here's the problem with that whole theory: There hasn't been any announcement of a motive. One might assume that police officers serving a warrant for accusations of sexual abuse against those foster children might be reason enough. It doesn't have to be "leftists raging against authority" as much as a man wanting to avoid accountability for heinous acts.
The NRA is an organization desperately in need of defunding. Sooner rather than later.
