Oregon shooting: Jeb Bush says 'stuff happens' as left calls for gun control

Ben Jacobs in Washington and Sabrina Siddiqui in Dubuque, Iowa
Friday 2 October 2015 20.44 BST

Presidential candidates are weighing their very public consciences in the aftermath of the Oregon college shooting, as Democrats and Republicans signal a need for long-awaited gun control legislation against, as the Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly put it, the cost of “our freedom that allows insane individuals to kill so many people”.

Or, as Jeb Bush reportedly put it on Friday: “Stuff happens.”

From frontrunner Hillary Clinton to the self-declared socialist but firearm-regulation moderate Bernie Sanders, liberals danced – delicately and less so – around what Barack Obama on Thursday called “a political choice” to not enact stricter gun laws. Conservatives were quick to jump on the president’s “reflexive” remarks, though even Donald Trump was already calling for mental health reform.

Perhaps none of the 21 contenders for the White House was more immediately forceful in a call for reform than former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley. “Only real gun reforms will stop mass shootings from occurring nearly every day,” the long-shot Democrat wrote on Twitter, pre-empting Obama’s phrase that “thoughts and prayers” were not enough, even hours after the mass shooting.

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