Most discussion of the issues in the Republican Party hardly amounts to a debate; that is never more true than on the topic of gun violence. Faced with gridlock among Republicans in Congress, President Obama is preparing to announce new executive orders to prevent gun violence. Meanwhile, the GOP has nothing to add to the conversation but some variation of a shrug and Jeb Bush’s “stuff happens.” Their loyalty to the gun lobby is so strong, truly nothing — not even keeping guns out of the hands of terrorists — will change their extreme, absolutist position.
Here’s some of the embarrassing rhetoric the GOP field spouts on gun violence:
Donald Trump: “Whenever I see gun-free zone, that’s a flag for the whackos to come in and start shooting people.”
- Trump: “If the people in Paris had guns, you know what, you wouldn’t have had 134 people and many more to follow get killed. And if people in California had guns, a couple of guns in that room, you wouldn’t have had 16 people killed.”
Jeb Bush: “It’s just — it’s very sad to see, but I resist the notion, and I did — I had this challenge as governor. Because we had, look, stuff happens, there’s always a crisis. And the impulse is always to do something, and it’s not always the right thing to do.”
Ted Cruz: “We don’t stop the bad guys by taking away our guns. We stop the bad guys by using our guns.”
Marco Rubio: “We have a serious societal problem…But we’re focusing too much on what it is people are using to commit violence, and not enough on why it is that people are committing violence…These gun laws just aren’t effective at preventing this.”
- Rubio: “Guns are what they’re using to commit the violence. And, again, in many of these cases, the laws that are actually being proposed wouldn’t have prevented them.”
Ben Carson: “Obviously, there are those that are going to be calling for gun control, but that happens every time we have one of these incidents. Obviously, that’s not the issue.”
- Carson: “Of course it is the person behind the gun — guns don’t kill people.”
John Kasich: “I don’t believe that gun control would stop this…I don’t think any president can stop mass shootings.”
Carly Fiorina: “So, before we start calling for more laws, I think we ought to consider why we don’t enforce the laws we have.”
Mike Huckabee: “We have not so much a gun problem; we have a problem with sin and evil…I hear people say, ‘We just have to do something.’ Well, we need to do something that makes sense and something that actually helps.”
Chris Christie: “I don’t think there is [a correlation between New Jersey’s tough gun laws and its low murder rate]…In many of the places around this country where they have the toughest gun laws, they have the highest violent crime rates.”
Published: Jan 4, 2016