GOP Candidates Have Nothing Useful to Say About Gun Violence

Students at Perry High School were returning from winter break Thursday when a 17-year-old opened fire, wounding five, including the principal; killing a sixth-grader and himself; and adding the Iowa town to the long list of communities that have been ravaged by this particularly American brand of violence. “New year, same horror,” as Kris Brown, president of the gun reform group Brady, summed it up in a statement Thursday.

But if one of the first mass shootings of 2024 was tragically familiar in a country that saw more than 650 such incidents in 2023, it was distinguished by its political backdrop. For months, Republican aspirants have been barnstorming the state ahead of the January 15 caucus, trying to sell Hawkeye voters on their vision for the country—visions that, despite the Thursday shooting’s proximity to the present center of the GOP’s political universe, evidently do not include any gun safety measures that could prevent the kind of carnage that visited Perry.

Donald Trump, the GOP frontrunner who has described himself as the “most pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment president you’ve ever had,” did not immediately address the Perry shooting—even as he promoted upcoming campaign events he’s hosting in the state, including in the Des Moines area. (His sole mention of the tragedy, as of Friday morning, appeared to be his promotion of an unconfirmed right-wing post about the alleged shooter’s gender identity.) His closest two opponents, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, each offered thoughts to the community. But neither addressed the weapons that make the devastation possible, instead making promises to address mental health and to beef up school security—without saying how, exactly, they’d do that.

“We have to deal with the cancer that is mental health,” Haley said in one bizarre post.

“We obviously, you know, have a responsibility to create safe environments,” DeSantis told NBC News and the Des Moines Register in a joint interview Thursday. But “it is more of a local and state issue,” he said, and he does not “support infringing the rights of law-abiding citizens with respect to the ability to exercise their constitutional rights.”

“That’s an underlying sickness in society,” he said.

Far-right gadfly Vivek Ramaswamy, who was in Perry for a campaign event Thursday, echoed DeSantis, lamenting a “psychological sickness at the core” of America during a prayer event. “God, please help our country,” he said.

But it’s not God’s responsibility to end this violence. That’s the job for the leaders of this nation, which endures a firearm death rate that far outpaces that of its peers—not because it has poorer mental health, worse school security, or more bullying than other countries, but because it offers extraordinary access to deadly weapons. The suggestion that there is nothing that can be done to prevent such shootings should be disqualifying for anyone aspiring to the most powerful position in government. We don’t need divine intervention. We need common sense gun reform that most Republicans have stood in the way of in deference to the gun lobby—and a perverse vision of freedom. “Our hearts break for the families of the victims in yet another act of senseless gun violence,” White House Spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday, renewing calls for congressional action. “We cannot allow these tragedies to continue.”