(I've read the family's statement).
His father sounds like a foul demon and sorry, South Carolina has more than its fair share of unrepentant hard core racists, and Roof had problems, and you know what?
Every bit of that helps explain what he did in some kind of abstract intellectual way, but when it comes right down to it, NONE of it explains away the fact this boy and not that boy or the other boy, nor the thousands others just like him in that state or another state, haven't and won't gun down innocent folks while they pray and rejoice in God.
THIS boy is a hating racist cold blooded murderer, and maybe I've just spent too much time recently trying to figure out the why's of such people, but man am I tired of having families brought into the figuring, or hearing sociological figurings or demographic figurings or anything else, EXCEPT the obvious, that the hating racist murderous boy couldn't have murdered so many people so quickly had he not had a gun, and sorry, I find it a deeply shameful thing that no matter the tens and tens of thousands of murders committed in the U.S. of A, including massacres of school children and moviegoers and college kids and folks in restaurants just hoping for a good meal, and no matter the almost killed, including presidents, even, FGS, that no matter all of that, guns and shotguns and automatic rifles and every other kind of weapon are served up like candy, flow like water.
THAT boy. (another day, another boy, man, girl, woman) Plus (hatred as acceptable hobby, mental illness, jealousy, desire for fame, racism, etc.) PLUS A GUN.
I wish with all my heart for it to be different, but it won't be. Not tomorrow or next month or next year.