Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee weighed in on the deaths of nine people who were murdered in Charleston, South Carolina, last week, saying the "heartbreak for what happened in Charleston is it happened in a church."
Huckabee, the Republican presidential candidate and former pastor, added, "There is no other explanation for what is behind such heinous acts" than evil and sin.
"I think the heartbreak for what happened in Charleston is it happened in a church, in a sanctuary, a place where people go for refuge, to be safe, to escape, the horrors of the world and to find God," Huckabee said on the CATS Roundtable Radio Show on AM970 The Answer. "It's a place normally where Earth meets heaven, and Wednesday night it was a place it was a place where Earth met hell."
Huckabee said that Dylann Storm Roof, the 21-year-old man charged for the mass shooting, was "obviously a racist by his own admission." Huckabee said that although it was not "politically correct" to say the shooting was caused by "things such as evil or sin" there was "no other explanation" for what was behind the shootings.
"And this 21-year-old young man, obviously a racist by his own admission, sitting through a prayer and bible study for an hour, and then standing up and murdering nine people," Huckabee said. "It really does remind us that we live in a world where there is evil. I know it's not politically correct, or certainly not in vogue to speak of things such as evil or sin, but John, there is no other explanation for what is behind such heinous acts."
Segueing into a question about the events in Baltimore surrounding the death of Freddie Gray, Huckabee was asked about the 40 people killed in Baltimore in the month of May, the highest rate of homicide for the city since 1999.
"I think police are very afraid in cities like Baltimore when they know that their mayor and their police chief or in that case the prosecuting attorney is more likely to prosecute the police than they are the most notorious criminals," Huckabee said.
"It's really a horrific kind of upheaval of a civilized society," Huckabee continued. "We all know that police can make mistakes and they do, and when they make mistakes or when they do something is intentionally out-of-bounds, yes they need to prosecuted. But you can not, uh, prosecute a police officer for everything that might happen."
Huckabee gave an example from his time as governor, saying he had to authorize more executions than any other governor in his state's history. Saying he had "months" to go over the documents before an execution, Huckabee noted police only have a one or two seconds to make a life of death decision.
Huckabee added we need to "have a great deal more respect" for what we ask officers to do, and that bad cops should be dealt with. However, we should not ever "emasculate the power of our policemen" because of a couple of bad cops.