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Jacksonville Sheriff Slams Leftist Anti-Gun Agenda After Tragedy: ‘The Problem Is The Individual’

   DailyWire.com
This video grab shows Jacksonville Sheriff TK Waters speaking during a news conference about the gunman in Jacksonville, Florida, August 26, 2023. A white man driven by racial hatred shot dead three Black people in a Florida discount store August 26 before taking his own life after a standoff with police, authorities said. "He targeted a certain group of people and that's Black people. That's what he said he wanted to kill. And that's very clear," Jacksonville Sheriff TK Waters told a news conference about the gunman, who was in his early 20s.
AFP via Getty Images

Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters slammed the political Left’s anti-gun narrative over the weekend in response to a racially motivated shooting that killed three people at a Dollar General store that has been deemed as racially motivated.

The assailant, a white male in his early 20s, left behind manifestos that made it clear that he was specifically targeting black people.

“The story is always about guns — people are bad — this guy’s a bad guy,” Waters said. “If I could take my gun off right now, and I lay it on this counter, nothing will happen. It’ll sit there — but as soon as wicked person grabs ahold of that handgun and starts shooting people with it — there’s the problem.”

“The problem is the individual,” he added. “Now guns are a tool that people use to do horrible things. But it’s the individuals that wield these things. So we are working hard to try to stop that. But in this situation, in this case, there was nothing saying—, there was nothing illegal about him owning the firearms.”

The assailant was able to legally purchase firearms despite the fact that he had been placed on a temporarily involuntarily mental health hold in 2017 under the state’s Baker Act.

WATCH:

“This shooting, based on the manifesto that they’ve discovered from the scumbag that did this, was racially motivated,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on Saturday. “He was targeting people based on their race — that is totally unacceptable. This guy killed himself rather than face the music and accept responsibility for his actions.”

“He took the coward’s way out,” he continued. “We condemn what happened in the strongest possible terms. We’ve offered support for Sheriff Waters in the city of Jacksonville, and we send our condolences to the victims and their families who were the victims of a very cowardly act.”

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The Daily Wire   >  Read   >  Jacksonville Sheriff Slams Leftist Anti-Gun Agenda After Tragedy: ‘The Problem Is The Individual’