Jeb Argues Against Gun Control After Oregon Massacre: ‘Stuff Happens’

Mykal McEldowney/AP On a campaign stop in Greenville, N.C., Jeb Bush argued against more gun control a day after the Oregon community college shooting in which a gunman killed nine people. There’s always a crisis, and the impulse is always to do something, and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do. But then the guy said, it’s amusing, you send a guy in with an oozy or a handgun to shoot a bunch of people, the first thing they do, prayer vigil. And what we end up doing lots of times is we create rules on the 99.999% of human activity that had nothing to do with the tragedy that forced the conversation about doing something.

And I don’t think more government is necessarily the answer to this.

When the reporter noted his use of the phrase “stuff happens” in describing a massacre, Bush, obviously annoyed, quickly added, “Things happen”.

“But I resist the notion-and I had this challenge as governor-because we had-look, stuff happens, there’s always a crisis”. Institutional racism? Stuff happens.

Obama, asked about the comment at a White House press conference Friday, snapped that “I don’t think I even have to react to that one“. “I think the American people should hear that and make their own judgments”, Obama continued, reiterating his call for stronger gun laws. What Bush derides as “free stuff” – say, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and school lunch subsidies – are a vital safety net for millions of the elderly, the poor, and children, regardless of race or ethnicity. Things. Is that better? A real president would know that. Or, say, after the death of four Americans in Benghazi.

And yet, it’s hard to imagine anything more crass and politicized than playing off people’s death as “stuff” that “happens” in order to explain why we don’t need gun control.

Thankfully, Jeb Bush is not our president and never will be.