President Obama is trying take meaningful steps to curb gun violence. And Chris Christie‘s going around saying he’s “acting like a dictator and a petulant child.”
Even as 88% of Americans — including 79% of Republicans — express support for universal background checks, the Republicans at tonight’s debate continue to duck and dodge their duty, refusing to take a stand because they’re bought and paid for by the NRA. For the candidates in Congress — see: Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz — when things come to a vote, they can be counted on to protect suspected terrorists’ rights to purchase a firearm.
Rather than vow to take action — apparently at a certain level indifferent to the lives at stake — the members of the Republican field blame the “decline of culture” and “societal decay,” insisting that the wide availability of firearms isn’t at the heart of the problem.
Here’s a sample of the GOP’s feeble excuses for inaction:
- 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.”
- 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 guncontrol, 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.
- 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 14, 2016