DECEMBER 3, 2015
For a change, it didn’t take long for the Republican Presidential candidates to react to yesterday’s mass killing of 14 people in San Bernadino, CA. Did they pledge to take action to stop such a gun-fueled massacre from ever happening again? Of course not. They relied once more on the tried and true response and went the familiar “thoughts and prayers” route on Twitter.
LINDSEY GRAHAM: “Thoughts & prayers are with #San Bernadino.”
MIKE HUCKABEE: “Praying for those impacted by the shooting in California today.”
BEN CARSON: “My thoughts and prayers are with the shooting victims and their families in San Bernardino.”
RAND PAUL: “My thoughts and prayers are with the victims, families, and brave first responders during this unspeakable tragedy.”
TED CRUZ: “Our prayers are with the victims, their families, and the first responders in San Bernardino who willingly go into harm’s way to save others.”
Lots of thoughts. Lots of prayers. Lovely sentiments all. But you must remember that these very candidates are among those who are working hard to prevent any kind of meaningful gun control legislation from becoming law, a development that could help keep them from having to send thoughts and prayers when these kinds of incidents occur seemingly every week.
But a funny thing happened on Twitter yesterday. Some people have clearly had enough of those politicos using tweets offering “thoughts and prayers” as an excuse not to do anything meaningful to remedy the crisis, so a new hashtag, #thoughtsandprayers, was born, not as a site to express those actions, but one where Republican politicians are called out on their hypocrisy regarding gun violence. As soon as a GOP officeholder would tweet a “thoughts and prayers” message, Igor Volsky, contributing editor for political website Think Progress, would tweet back with how much money that politician has accepted in contributions from the National Rifle Association.
Granted, some on the website took it too far and indulged in what was called “prayer shaming,” questioning the power of prayer itself. Let me be clear — the question at hand is not about prayer, but is instead about the hypocrisy of those who feel that calling for prayer is enough when they could be doing something meaningful to put their faith into action by supporting laws that could save many lives.
For their part, the Democratic candidates hit the gun control message hard:
HILLARY CLINTON: “I refuse to accept this as normal. We must take action to stop gun violence now.”
BERNIE SANDERS: “Mass shootings are becoming an almost-everyday occurrence in this country. This sickening and senseless gun violence must stop.”
At least they’re talking about some kind of action on this, although if it looks like this was an act of domestic terrorism, they had better pivot to that issue quickly.
For all the social media back-and-forth about “thoughts and prayers,” however, probably the most thoughtful tweet came from Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT):
“Your ‘thoughts’ should be about steps to take to stop this carnage. Your ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness if you do nothing – again.”
Amen, brother.
