Professor Obama: You Know It’s Hard To ‘Untangle The Motives’ Of The Dallas Shooter

During a press conference in Warsaw at the NATO Summit, Leah wrote about how Obama once again pressed gun control in the wake of the Dallas attack. On July 7, Micah Xavier Johnson, 25, a U.S. Army veteran, ambushed police during a peaceful protest against the recent string of police-involved shooting deaths against black Americans. He shot twelve officers, killing five, in the worst attack on law enforcements since 9/11. Dallas Police Chief Brown said that Johnson, who was held up El Centro College parking complex, said he was upset by the shooting deaths of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota. He was also angry with white people, and that he wanted to kill white people, especially white police officers. Yet, President Obama said that the motive that led to Johnson killing police officer might be “hard to untangle.” Over at Hot Air, they once called Obama “President See-No-Evil.” It appears he’s back.

First of all, I think it’s very hard to untangle the motives of this shooter. As we’ve seen in a whole range of incidents with mass shooters, they’re, by definition, troubled. By definition, if you shoot people who pose no threat to you—strangers—you have a troubled mind. What triggers that, what feeds it, what sets it off—I’ll leave that to psychologists and people who study these kinds of incidents.

Troubled? Micah Xavier Johnson and others like him to commit mass shootings are troubled? You don’t say, professor. When someone tells Dallas Police negotiators that they want to kill white people, especially white officers—they’re troubled? I need to sit down, really. Of course, these people are messed in the head. In fact, the vast majority of mass shooters exhibited signs of mental illness, but are still able to legally buy firearms. Maybe we just need a better mental health system, but no one wants to discuss that because liberals want to die on the expanded background check hill, which won’t pass this Congress.

Before Dallas Police sent a robot armed with an explosive device to kill Johnson, he offered his motives. They seem pretty clear, just like the motives that reportedly drove Dylann Roof to kill nine black people in a church in South Carolina.