Big and Rich: When the Shooter Attacked This Crowd, He Didn’t Attack Country Music, He Attacked America

RUSH EXCERPT:

MELBER: "You know, we look at these. We’ve seen attacks on other music site, concerts, places where people gather and gather to be together and to give tribute to America. So I wonder, what do you plan to do? Do you plan to keep playing just like you did? What do you want to say to people who would attack these kind of gatherings?" 
RICH: "You know, they attack these kind of gatherings as we all know to try to strike such fear in us that we will stop doing what we’re doing. We will not stop, you know, being free Americans and life loving, fun-loving Americans. And we’re not going to do that. The country music fan base and the country singer, we have a really unique relationship. We know these people. We know a lot of them by their first names. We talk to them on social media. We meet them at the meet and greets. A lot of them come to multiple shows over the years. We know these people. Our meet and greet before the show consisted of there was four school teachers that came through. There was a Vietnam veteran. There was offduty police, offduty fire. There were college students. There were people from southern California, all the way to Canada that had come to this show. It was a very diverse group of people. When this man attacked this crowd, he didn’t attack country music. He attacked America. He attacked all of us when he attacked us. And like I said, two hours prior to this attack, all 22,000 of those people were sing “God bless America” at the top of their lungs. It was just a powerful moment. And then an absolute 180 when this maniac started raining down like he did."