Jeb Bush shrugs off Oregon shooting: “Stuff happens” An error occurred

After challenging a reporter to tell him “what I said wrong”, Bush clarified that he meant “Things happen all the time”. So, the impulse to call Bush’s response a gaffe rests instead upon the callousness of the wording – “stuff happens”.

Turning to the Oregon killings, Bush said: “It’s very sad to see, but … stuff happens, there’s always a crisis, and the impulse is to do something, and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do”.

He said “I’m not sure we need half a billion dollars in funding for women’s health programs” when asked about defunding Planned Parenthood. Bush said, “Things happen all the time“.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama, when asked about Bush’s remarks, initially said that he should not have to respond to Bush’s comments. “But sometimes you’re imposing solutions to problems that doesn’t fix the problem and takes away people’s liberties and rights and that’s what I was trying to say“.

Democrats argue that the context is still unkind to Bush, given the frequency of mass shootings in the US. “I agree”, Huckabee said, before launching into the good-guy-with-a-gun theory.

One-time Republican front-runner Jeb Bush has dropped to 4% in the polls and there is no wonder why. Trump went on, “You’re always going to have difficulties, no matter how tight you run it”. You’re not going to grab 300 million guns owned by law-abiding people, nor should you have the right to. “We need sensible gun-control legislation which prevents guns from being used by people who should not have them”. Next week, Bush heads back to Chicago, where he quickly converted former Romney supporters early this year, for a series of fundraisers hosted by wealthy donors who helped get his super PAC soaring.

Obama spoke of a mismatch between Americans’ willingness to tighten gun laws and the powerful influence of pro-gun groups. Now here’s Bush, on the heels of implying African-Americans merely want free stuff, reacting with the verbal equivalent of shrugging one’s shoulders to a massacre.

“There are all sorts of things that happen in life”, he said.

Bush’s finance team describes his fundraising in the past three months as “respectable” and “fine”, while declining to provide the specifics on just how much they raised.

“We hardly know any of the details about this horrific tragedy”, Huckabee said in a statement.