If you are a Republican Presidential Candidate, the issue of paramount importance, following a gun massacre, is the expression of prayer. 'The unspeakable tragedy' of the San Bernardino shooting should not be dealt with in a pragmatic way; the most important thing to do, immediately, is to pray. Republicans always say it's too soon to politicize the issue of gun law reformation, but for the injured victims, the deceased, and their families, it's already too late.
The New York Daily News, hardly the bastion of coherent rationality, incensed Fiorina with their cover this morning.
She proclaimed,
'Despite the headline in The Daily News, the first thing I did was say a prayer. Say a prayer for those who had been murdered, say a prayer for their families, say a prayer for those who are trying to recover and say a prayer especially as well for our first responders, and then we need to ask some tough questions.'
She's got quite a bit to say now, which is nothing like her delayed and carefully measured (and obnoxious) response to the Colorado Springs, Planned Parenthood shooting. Somehow, she blames President Obama for yesterday's attack, because he didn't take the November 13th Paris attacks seriously enough. She arrives at this conclusion because the (S.B. Inland Regional) shooters share a similar ethnicity with the Parisian attackers. The obvious, anti-abortion fueled-rhetoric from her debate rantings, which the PP shooter repeated, verbatim, had absolutely no impact upon that tragedy.
Mika Brzezinski reminds Carly that whether the cause of the almost daily mass shooting is mental health or terrorism, the common strain is guns. Mika explains that the GOP guests who were on Morning Joe before her all believed it was futile to attempt to modify gun laws in any way. Even Scarborough, with his 100% rating with the NRA, thinks that we need some sort of drastic change, and Fiorina's plan to simply revise terror watch lists and the like will have very little impact.
Fiorina's paternalistic mentality that stricter gun laws won't work because California and South Carolina (two states with recent mass shootings) have rigid gun-control laws, is preposterous because anyone can cross state lines and find a state with far less rigid gun regulations and purchase whatever their heart desires. She thinks that we don't enforce existing laws in most states regarding gun regulation. Seldom do we hear about the, straw purchases, which account for a large percentage of these questionable gun transactions, which are next to impossible to regulate. Most of these NRA-sponsored politicians also fail to mention the endless number of gun shows which make it so easy to acquire a deadly weapon.
FIORINA: We don't enforce the laws in this country...I think it's ideology, not common sense, that the causes the Left Wing, every time, in a knee-jerk reaction, to say the answer here is more laws, when we're not enforcing the laws we have (we aren't? Could it be the NRA?) Let's start by enforcing the laws we have.
BRZENZSKI: So wouldn't it be common sense to have people who are on the terror watch list, not be allowed to buy, I mean, there are common sense things that we can do, are there not?
FIORINA: That's kind of a red herring honestly, if somebody is a suspected terrorist on a watch list, they can be indicted at any time, and once you're indicted, you cannot own a firearm. So let's enforce the laws we have, let's start with that. I honestly think that's why people are losing faith in their government, losing faith in their political....CROSSTALK
SCARBOROUGH: if you're on a terror watch list, you can't get on a plane, but you can buy a .223?
FIORINA: Well you know my best friend's husband was on the watch list, for years, it was a complete mistake; he happened to be a gun owner. If I had utter faith in the competence of government, I might agree with that, but do you? I don't! The government screws up all the time...there are litanies of things the government makes mistakes on. (so odd that she wants to run the same government that she deems completely incompetent).
SCARBOROUGH: But do you throw out the baby with the bathwater?... you're saying that they make a mistake, one or two percent of the time on the terror watch list, so it isn't worth it for the 97 or 98% of the time that it works?
FIORINA: This is a red herring to suggest that we should have background checks for those on the terror watch list. Why aren't these people prosecuted?
Why aren't they? THE NRA, Carly. It's the NRA. Please don't pretend otherwise!
The HP Corporate Destroyer is outraged that the focus, now, is not on the possible Islamic terrorism that may have contributed to this tragedy, but on gun-control. Even Scarborough, who is normally critical of President Obama, believes this incident isn't his fault (will wonders never cease?).
Joe Scar suggests to Carly that maybe it's a problem with how the NRA's values have changed, and not with how his values have changed. Is he saying that the NRA is remiss in its responsibility to promote the sale of guns in a responsible manner? That would be pretty awesome if that were the case. Scarborough said that there are some things that Republicans need to do to change the current reality. Carly thinks that's absolutely ridiculous because she likes the handsome checks she receives from the NRA, and dammit, that will shape her reality. No silly little mass shootings will change her opinion.