SC activists call for expanded gun background checks a decade after Mother Emanuel slaying

By: Jessica Holdman - March 13, 2025 6:15 pm

https://scdailygazette.com/2025/03/13/sc-activists-call-for-expanded-gun-background-checks-a-decade-after-mother-emanuel-slaying/

Rep. Hamilton Grant, D-Columbia, raises the Bible of his wife’s grandfather, who was one of nine parishioners slain by a gunman at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in 2015. Grant stood with activists on the Statehouse steps Thursday, March 13, 2025, calling on legislators to close the “Charleston loophole” for gun background checks nearly a decade after the Mother Emanuel shooting. (Photo by Jessica Holdman/SC Daily Gazette)

COLUMBIA — Nearly a decade ago, a “loophole” in the federal gun law made it possible for an avowed white supremacist with a history of drug use to buy a pistol, despite a drug arrest that should have blocked the purchase.

Two months later, he used that pistol to kill nine members of the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston gathered for a Bible study the evening of June 17, 2015.

The tragedy still haunts the family of Rep. Hamilton Grant, D-Columbia, whose wife’s grandfather, the Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., was among the victims.

​​Grant joined the roughly 50 activists from the South Carolina chapter of Moms Demand Action and the Beaufort High School chapter of Students Demand Action on the south steps of the Statehouse on Thursday to call for passage of state legislation to close the so-called “Charleston loophole.”