There have been no mass shootings today—so far. But four adults and a kid were shot Monday in Ohio; five victims were hit Tuesday in Chicago; and then yesterday 10 people died in a shooting in Oregon.
Despite the country's insane rate of gun violence (45 shootings this year just in schools!) the reaction from the GOP presidential contenders has ranged from "Oh, let's not over react here" to "This shooting has nothing to do with guns."
“Praying for Umpqua Community College, the victims, and families impacted by this senseless tragedy,” Jeb Bush tweeted.
But "senseless" isn't quite the right word, is it? Oregon received a "D+" on gun laws from the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. America endures around 12,000 gun-related homicides every year, so at this point there's plenty of data to make sense of.
“My prayers are with everyone in Oregon," tweeted Mike Huckabee. "May the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, guard your hearts.”
That's very nice of him to say, but once again there's that suggestion that "understanding" this event requires some kind of transcendence. No, Mike, it does not. We can understand this event just fine. Someone got a gun, because it is easy; and they got bullets, because they are cheap.
In fact, as far as I can tell, only one GOP candidate even brought up the subject of guns after the Oregon shooting — and he used the opportunity to oppose tighter gun control.
"Obviously, that's not the issue," Ben Carson said. "The issue is the mentality of these people and we need to be looking at the mentality of the individuals and seeing if there are any early warning clues that we can gather that will help us as a society to be able to identify these people ahead of time."
Sure, okay, better mental health services would be nice. Of course, the only time any GOP presidential candidate wants to talk about mental health is when they're trying to change the subject away from gun control.
In contrast to the Republican candidates, Hillary tweeted that what's needed is sensible gun control. Of course that will never happen, but at least she's talking about guns instead of prayers and God, so.
And even Hillary is buying into this "who can possibly understand" narrative. "It is just beyond my comprehension that we are seeing these mass murders happen again and again and again," she said.
How is this beyond your comprehension, Hillary? How is this hard to understand? Gun nuts have a lot of money, and they've bought a lot of politicians, so gun control is impossible. The end.
To his credit, Bernie Sanders responded with a portfolio of measures he'd like to see to reduce gun violence: gun control, mental health services, and less violent media.
This sounds nice, but how feasible are any of those plans? Sanders himself has a mixed record on gun control (he voted against the Brady Bill and enjoyed support from the NRA, but supported background checks). And how exactly does he propose to make the media less violent?
Sorry to be such a downer about this. But judging from the reaction from a truly devastating shooting, it's looking like the gun rhetoric emerging from the 2016 presidential campaign is going to be the same rhetoric we've heard before: a mumbled, noncommittal shrug, drowned out by ongoing gunfire.
