There’s an old cliché in America’s gun debate that is so anathema to common sense — Guns don’t kill, people kill — that politically serious defenders of gun culture seldom even invoke it anymore. Like “thoughts and prayers,” it has become a dark and self-defeating punchline. Yet former President Donald Trump and his former vice president, Mike Pence, both went there last week, while speaking separately to the National Rifle Association’s annual gathering in Indiana.
“We don’t need gun control, we need crime control,” Pence declared, offering a clever rhetorical construct that neatly ignores the undeniable relationship between crime and guns. Trump opined: “This is not a gun problem, this is a mental health problem, this is a social problem, this is a cultural problem, this is a spiritual problem,” a laundry list that more closely resembles his own psychological maladies.
The undeniable fact they keep avoiding is this: Yes, it’s the guns.
