Beyond ‘thoughts and prayers‘
By Hadley Robinson
After a tragic shooting at a community college in Oregon on Thursday, President Obama emotionally called out politicians who have failed to pass meaningful gun control legislation.
Of the 15 Republican presidential candidates, only five mentioned the Umpqua Community College shooting on Twitter on Thursday. All five offered thoughts and prayers, but said nothing about gun control legislation, background checks or mental health reform.
Let’s take a look at what those five have done beyond just offering their thoughts and prayers. (We’re looking only at Republicans because the Democratic candidates, unsurprisingly, mentioned gun control reform in their tweets.)
Jeb Bush
The NRA has given Bush an A+ rating, though the former governor doesn’t own a gun. Bush signed the first “Stand your Ground” law as Florida governor in 2005 and has been defending it on the campaign trail. The law allows Floridians to shoot somebody if they feel threatened, and Bush says it’s been a model for other states. The law has been hugely controversial since George Zimmerman was found innocent in the shooting death of hoody-wearing teenager Trayvon Martin.
Bush also signed a law creating a $5 million fine for anybody attempting to create a registry of legal gun owners in Florida.
Lindsey Graham
Graham has often boasted about his sizable gun collection and has a rock-solid record defending gun rights.
Graham supported a bill reducing the waiting time to buy a gun from three days to one, voted to prohibit lawsuits against gun manufacturers and helped establish a national standard for conceal-and-carry laws.
Then, in 2013, Graham voted against a ban of large capacity ammunition devices — the ban would have prevented the sale of gun magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds.
John Kasich
While in Congress, Kasich supported the 1994 ban on assault weapons, earning him an “F” grade from the NRA.
But his position on gun control has changed since becoming governor. In 2012, a week after the Sandy Hook shooting, he signed a bill that eliminated a requirement to get a “competency certificate” before renewing a driver’s license, and allowed guns to be kept in cars in the parking garage beneath the statehouse.
After Thursday’s shooting Kasich told MSNBC: “You can strip all the guns away but the people who are going to commit crimes or have problems are always going to have the guns and more and more people feel like I’d like to be able to protect myself.”
Mike Huckabee
Huckabee is a big fan of guns. He loves hunting, collects guns and has a concealed carry permit. The name of his latest memoir is God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy.
In his book he writes: “Clearly, city slickers who are more afraid of guns than of the criminals who might use them have a serious mental condition rendering them incapable of critical thinking.”
Needless to say, he is into making sure there are no limits for gun owners. He has said before, “a good guy armed is still better than a good guy unarmed.” He responded to the shooting in Oregon by saying, “It was a cop with a gun that stopped him.”
George Pataki
Pataki is probably the most centrist of all the Republican candidates when it comes to gun control. As governor of New York he signed a law that banned certain assault weapons, required trigger locks on new guns and raised the age of legal gun owners from 18 to 21. When he signed the bill into law in 2000, the New York Times called it the “strictest gun control in the country.”
These Republicans are not yet heeding Obama’s call to do more than think and pray. If any of them get the job of commander-in-chief, tasked with comforting the families of mass shooting after mass shooting, might they change their tune?
