Hor­ri­fy­ing and repul­sive does­n’t even begin to describe how awful this news is:

A white gun­man killed nine peo­ple dur­ing a prayer meet­ing at one of Charleston’s old­est and best-known black church­es Wednes­day night in one of the worst mass shoot­ings in South Car­oli­na history.

Heav­i­ly armed law enforce­ment offi­cers scoured the area into the morn­ing for the man respon­si­ble for the car­nage inside Emanuel AME Church at 110 Cal­houn St. At least one per­son was said to have sur­vived the rampage.

Police revealed no motive for the 9 PM attack, which was report­ed­ly car­ried out by a young white man. Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen said, “I do believe this was a hate crime.”

What else can this be but a hate crime of the worst kind?

A white man walked into a his­toric black church in Amer­i­ca’s Deep South and mur­dered nine black peo­ple in cold blood. The ensu­ing inves­ti­ga­tion will undoubt­ed­ly show that this evil act was per­pe­trat­ed by an incred­i­bly sick, prej­u­diced man with a burn­ing hatred for peo­ple who don’t look like him.

Right wing com­men­ta­tors have repeat­ed­ly sug­gest­ed or implied that racism in Amer­i­ca is a thing of the past. They have even argued that racism can’t be a prob­lem any­more because Amer­i­ca has twice elect­ed a black president.

But as these mur­ders demon­strate, racism is alive and well in Amer­i­ca. And thanks to our lax gun safe­ty laws, guns and ammu­ni­tion can be eas­i­ly obtained and used to com­mit acts of ter­ror­ism. That’s what this shoot­ing is: an act of terrorism.

Our elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives view over­seas ter­ror­ist net­works and the nations that enable those net­works as extreme threats to our nation­al secu­ri­ty and say we need to degrade and destroy these threats. But what about the threat of ter­ror­ism from with­in? White suprema­cists who open­ly believe that black and brown lives don’t mat­ter, and are pre­pared to com­mit mur­der in an attempt to start a race war are also a grave dan­ger to the nation­al secu­ri­ty of the Unit­ed States of America.

When are we going to take that threat seriously?

Our hearts are heavy this morn­ing. We share the anguish and pain of the fam­i­lies and friends of the dead. Their sor­rows are our sor­rows. We hope the per­pe­tra­tor of this hate crime can be swift­ly appre­hend­ed and brought to justice.

Emanuel African Methodist Epis­co­pal Church, for read­ers who don’t know, is one of the old­est black church­es in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, dat­ing back two cen­turies. It is a place of wor­ship and a place of activism where many civ­il rights cam­paigns have been planned. Mar­tin Luther King Jr. once gave an address there.  The church has long been a cen­ter of the black com­mu­ni­ty in Charleston, and con­se­quent­ly, it has endured a num­ber of attacks over the decades. But it has endured. And we pray fer­vent­ly that it will con­tin­ue to.

UPDATE, 9:50 AM: The author­i­ties have appre­hend­ed the sus­pect, Dylann Roof.

Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma has made a state­ment about this hate crime from the White House­’s James S. Brady Press Brief­ing Room:

The FBI is now on the scene with local police, and more of the Bureau’s best are on the way to join them. The Attor­ney Gen­er­al has announced plans for the FBI to open a hate crime inves­ti­ga­tion. We under­stand that the sus­pect is in cus­tody. And I’ll let the best of law enforce­ment do its work to make sure that jus­tice is served.

Until the inves­ti­ga­tion is com­plete, I’m nec­es­sar­i­ly con­strained in terms of talk­ing about the details of the case.

But I don’t need to be con­strained about the emo­tions that tragedies like this raise. I’ve had to make state­ments like this too many times. Com­mu­ni­ties like this have had to endure tragedies like this too many times. We don’t have all the facts, but we do know that, once again, inno­cent peo­ple were killed in part because some­one who want­ed to inflict harm had no trou­ble get­ting their hands on a gun. Now is the time for mourn­ing and for healing.

But let’s be clear: At some point, we as a coun­try will have to reck­on with the fact that this type of mass vio­lence does not hap­pen in oth­er advanced coun­tries. It doesn’t hap­pen in oth­er places with this kind of fre­quen­cy. And it is in our pow­er to do some­thing about it. I say that rec­og­niz­ing the pol­i­tics in this town fore­close a lot of those avenues right now. But it would be wrong for us not to acknowl­edge it.  And at some point it’s going to be impor­tant for the Amer­i­can peo­ple to come to grips with it, and for us to be able to shift how we think about the issue of gun vio­lence collectively.

Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and Sec­ond Lady Jill Biden also released a state­ment express­ing his con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies and friends of the dead.

UPDATE, 10:30 AM: The names of the vic­tims have been released. They are:

• Rev­erend Clemen­ta C. Pinck­ney, South Car­oli­na State Senate
• Tywan­za Sanders
• Cyn­thia Hurd
• Rev­erend Sharon­da Coleman-Singleton
• Myra Thomp­son
• Ethel Lance
• Rev­erend Daniel Simmons
• Rev­erend DePayne Middleton-Doctor
• Susie Jack­son

UPDATE, 7:30 PM: The New York Times has pub­lished a pro­file of the nine vic­tims of Roof’s act of ter­ror­ism. The Charleston Post and Couri­er, mean­while, has a sto­ry about the mag­ni­tude of the mur­ders. The sto­ry men­tions that South Car­oli­na does­n’t have a hate crime statute, which is pret­ty disturbing:

South Car­oli­na is one of five states, includ­ing Arkansas, Wyoming, Geor­gia and Michi­gan, that doesn’t have a hate crime statute on the books, so local author­i­ties are forced to rely on fed­er­al author­i­ties to make charges in these cases.

For years, state law­mak­ers have tried and failed repeat­ed­ly to push hate crime leg­is­la­tion through the Gen­er­al Assembly.

Rep. Seth Whip­per, D‑North Charleston, has tried for more than 15 years to get a bill passed by the Leg­is­la­ture that increased penal­ties for hate-relat­ed offens­es. But not enough peo­ple ral­lied behind his effort, Whip­per said.

His col­leagues and many out­side of the State­house failed to under­stand that the bill went beyond pro­tect­ing mem­bers of the black com­mu­ni­ty, Whip­per said. The bill, which has not been tak­en up in sub­com­mit­tee, also pro­tects from crimes moti­vat­ed by reli­gion, col­or, sex, age, nation­al ori­gin and sex­u­al orientation.

The Rev­erend Clemen­ta C. Pinck­ney was a mem­ber of the South Car­oli­na Sen­ate. It would be fit­ting if the South Car­oli­na Leg­is­la­ture could pass a hate crime statute in his mem­o­ry and the mem­o­ry of the eight oth­ers mur­dered at Moth­er Emanuel.