Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee lashed out at President Barack Obama on Friday for glazing over the fact that the victims of the Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon were Christians.
"The president always wants to be defensive and tell us that there's no such thing as Islamic terrorism, these aren't religious people even though we all know they are but when it seems the target is a Christian, he conveniently just ignores it, denies it or just moves on to something else. It is incredibly significant that there was a religious intent and motive in this shooter's attitude," Huckabee told Newsmax TV.
He also noticed that Obama often suggests the imposition of "common sense gun laws" after every shooting incident. But Huckabee said he does not see how gun laws would have prevented the carnage in Oregon.
"What common sense gun law does he have in mind because what he proposed after [the school shootings at Sandy Hook] would not have prevented it? Every time he has this proposal, it's always about tackling a problem that doesn't exist and not dealing with the real problem," he said. "And it's not going to help and stop these horrible shooting and all of us agree that it's unacceptable, that it's awful and that it's an incredible tragedy that we shouldn't just roll over and say 'there's nothing we can do.'"
Huckabee thinks it might be better if Obama started "tinkering with the First Amendment" rather than "the Second Amendment." He also said that people should stop glorifying the shooters by refusing to divulge their names and showing their pictures, because "in a deranged mind, it's glorification for them to get the publicity and the notoriety."
"Perhaps if we want to stop these mass killings, one way to do it is simply refer to them as the savage, the animal, the thug, the cold-blooded cowardly murderer but never, ever, ever mention the animal's name and never put his face up on the screen because then you give him exactly what he wants," he said.
Jeb Bush on Oregon massacre: 'Stuff happens'
Meanwhile, Huckabee's fellow Republican bet Jeb Bush believes that a mass casualty shooting, like the Oregon college massacre, is not a problem that the government could solve. He even offered a somewhat insensitive remark, which surprised reporters who were following his campaign stop in Greenville, South Carolina, on Friday, according to Mother Jones.
"We're in a difficult time in our country and I don't think more government is necessarily the answer to this," Bush said. "I think we need to reconnect ourselves with everybody else. It's very sad to see. But I resist the notion, and I had this challenge as governor — look, stuff happens. There's always a crisis. The impulse is always to do something and it's not necessarily the right thing to do."
