The presidential candidates responded to Thursday's mass shooting at Umpqua Community College with prayers, talk of mental illness, and calls for stronger gun laws. Can you guess which party each of those responses came from?
Jeb Bush, George Pataki, and Mike Huckabee offered prayers. John Kasich offered "thoughts and prayers." Donald Trump and Ben Carson were on Team Blame Mental Illness, with no explanation of why mental illness in the United States seems to lead to so much more gun violence than in other countries.
"It sounds like another mental health problem. So many of these people, they're coming out of the woodwork," Trump said, the Washington Post reported. "We have to really get to the bottom of it. It's so hard to even talk about these things, because you see them and it's such a tragedy."
Carson got in a double shot, blaming mental illness while explicitly rejecting the idea that guns are the issue or should be more strongly regulated:
“Obviously there are going to be those calling for gun control but that happens every time we have one of these incidents. Obviously that’s not the issue," Carson said. "The issue is the mentality of these people. And we need to be looking at the mentality of these individuals and seeing if there are any early warning clues that we can gather that will help us as a society be able to identify these people ahead of time."
The Democratic candidates, on the other hand, responded with calls for, in Bernie Sanders' words, "sensible gun-control legislation which prevents guns from being used by people who should not have them." Martin O'Malley tweeted that "Tweets won't stop this. Thoughts and prayers won't, either. Only real gun reforms will stop mass shootings from occurring nearly every day." And Hillary Clinton, speaking in Massachusetts, said:
"It is just beyond my comprehension that we are seeing these mass murders happen again and again and again," Clinton told the press. "And as I have said, we have got to get the political will to do everything we can to keep people safe. You know, I know there is a way to have sensible gun control measures that help prevent violence, prevent guns from getting into the wrong hands and save lives. And I am committed to doing everything I can to achieve that."
President Obama, too, had strong words about the need to actually do something to change this horrific pattern of mass shootings rather than just offering up platitudes and moving on. But as the candidates' responses remind us, the Republican Party is committed to pretending that guns aren't the problem.
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/lIpGLbgPloQ/-Republicans-want-prayer-Democrats-want-change-in-response-to-latest-mass-shooting
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