Haley supports furling flag in Citadel chapel

S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley said Thursday she would support lawmakers approving the removal of a Confederate flag from a chapel at The Citadel to a nearby museum.

But Haley said she does not support the state lengthening a federal three-day waiting period to complete background checks before gun purchases.

At the urging of Republican Haley, S.C. legislators removed the Confederate flag from the State House grounds last summer after a self-avowed racist, who had posed with the flag, was charged with slaying nine parishioners of Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church.

Subsequently, some legislators called on the state to close the so-called “Charleston loophole,” which allows guns to be purchased if a background check has not been completed in three days.

Dylann Roof, accused of shooting and killing nine African-American churchgoers in Charleston last June, was able to buy a gun because the three-day waiting period ran out before a background check had been completed accurately. Roof should have been barred from buying a gun because of an undiscovered pending drug charge, federal officials later said.

Speaking to reporters Thursday as the anniversary of the Charleston massacre draws near, Haley blamed the federal background-check process for the gun sale, adding expanding the waiting period would not solve the problem of guns getting in the wrong hands.

“You can expand it multiple days, but if you don’t fix the system ... none of this matters. If I give you six more days, how are you going to prove to me that it’s going to fix it?”

Haley said she is concerned with making “sure this doesn’t happen again.”

But, she added, gun-control measures have not come up in her talks with legislators or the families of the church shooting victims.

“With the families that I talk to, it’s more personal. We talk more about what they’re going through and their faith and the hardships.”

Jennifer Pinckney, the widow of pastor-Sen. Clementa Pinckney, who was among those slain at Emanuel, appeared with President Barack Obama when he announced executive orders on gun control, including expanded background checks.

Haley: Cadets should pressure Legislature

The Charleston church shooting also added vigor to an effort to remove the Confederate flag from a chapel at the nearby Citadel, which U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-Columbia, recently tried unsuccessfully to push at the federal level.

Haley said she has told Citadel cadets that if they want to remove the flag, they need to call their legislators. A state law requires legislative approval to remove Confederate monuments and symbols from public spaces.

However, Haley said she does not support making other changes, including efforts to change the names of buildings named after Confederate figures or sympathizers.

For example, some at Clemson University – Haley’s alma mater – want to rename a building named for Ben Tillman, a racist post-Reconstruction S.C. governor and U.S. senator.

The flag was a “flying, living, breathing, representative symbol,” Haley said Thursday. “You can’t have that representation there, and have children drive by and think that they don’t belong.

“If you start to go back in history for South Carolina, you’d be replacing every street sign, every building.”

The goal in removing the flag at the State House, lowered last July, was “not to erase history,” she said. “Our goal is to make sure every child felt welcome on State House grounds.”

Wishes Trump rhetoric was different

Haley said divisive rhetoric – like that seen in the presidential campaign – drives violence like the Charleston mass slaying.

Hearing that rhetoric from Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, was “the reason I was vocal about it. I know what that rhetoric can do. I saw it happen” in Charleston, she said.

“Bad things can happen when you have rhetoric like that, and people can get hurt.”

Haley said she endorsed U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida in the GOP presidential contest “to show that that’s not all of who we are.”

“I don’t think that people who support Trump are haters. I don’t think that people who support Trump are racists. I think that’s a different kind of anger in that they’re upset with Washington, D.C. They’re upset that nothing got done. And that’s what this is about.”

But, Haley added, “the way that he (Trump) communicates that, I wish were different.”

‘The state was forever changed’

Haley spoke to reporters ahead of the first anniversary of the June 17 Charleston massacre.

Speaking at times through tears, Haley said that not a day goes by that she does not think about what happened in Charleston.

Haley said the anniversary, which she will spend in Charleston, is a time to think about the families of the victims, the community and how the state responded in the immediate aftermath.

“What I hope you will do on this (one-) year anniversary (is) remember the families, remember the people, remember all the good and the bad that came out of it, and focus on that,” she said. “That’s what it is to me.

“The state was forever changed. I see good and bad that came out of June 17,” Haley said. “The bad, obviously, is that we lost nine people, and that three other people (survivors who also were in Emanuel) have to live with that memory of what happened in that room that night.

“The good side of it was, I’ve never been more proud of the people in South Carolina. It should restore everyone’s faith and goodness in people.”

Haley said South Carolinians learned something about themselves in the aftermath of the shooting “that they didn’t know” – something she credits with bringing down the Confederate flag.

“They all knew that they were a people of faith” and loved their neighbors, she said. “But this was a time that they were actually tested on it.

“They came through showing that that faith and that love that they talk about is real, and it was shown all across the state.”

This story was originally published June 2, 2016 at 12:46 PM with the headline "Haley supports furling flag in Citadel chapel."