Toby Keith On Charleston Shooting: Stricter Gun Laws Are Not The Answer

Toby Keith does not know what it will take to stop shootings like the one in Charleston, South Carolina, from happening, but the country star says stricter gun laws would make no difference.

According to USA Today, the famed musician said stricter gun control laws are not the answer to preventing the type of tragedy that occurred in Charleston.

“If it can happen in church, it can happen anywhere, so there’s no answer to it.”

Keith pointed out that even in countries with strict gun control laws, these types of tragedies still take place.

“Countries all over the world that have really strict gun policies, like Oslo, Norway. It happens there.”

Toby Keith further commented it is hard to predict when this type of gun violence will occur, but if armed police officers had been at the prayer meeting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Wednesday, the country music star thinks “maybe seven or eight of those nine people would still be alive,” reports the Associated Press.

Keith made his comments less than 24 hours after gunman Dylann Roof opened fire on members of a Bible study group at the church in Charleston, South Carolina, leaving nine church members dead. Roof, 21, was arrested Thursday and confessed to the shooting, telling authorities he wanted to start a race war, according to Fox8 News.

The tragedy in Charleston has again sparked widespread debate on whether stricter gun control laws in the United States are the answer. Toby Keith is, of course, not the only public figure to voice the opinion that more guns, not less, may have prevented Wednesday’s shooting. As the Inquisitr previously reported, 2016 Republican primary candidate Mike Huckabee too believes more guns are the answer.

“All the proposals this president and others have put forward on gun control would not have stopped this shooting any more than it would have stopped Sandy Hook. The one thing that would have at least ameliorated the horrible situation in Charleston would have been that if somebody in that prayer meeting had a conceal carry or there had been either an off duty policeman or an on duty policemen, somebody with the legal authority to carry a firearm and could have stopped the shooter.”

Toby Keith voiced his thoughts about the Charleston shooting on Thursday from the red carpet at the Songwriters Hall of Fame gala in New York, where he was being inducted.

[Image by Gary Gershoff/Getty Images]