Mike Huckabee rushes to blame gun free zones for San Bernardino mass shooting

Huckabee says he already knows that a "mentally unstable person" targeted "a gun free zone"

By Sophia Tesfaye

Senior Politics Editor

Published December 2, 2015 9:28PM (EST)

  (Jeff Malet, maletphoto.com)
(Jeff Malet, maletphoto.com)

The San Bernardino Police Department is still searching for up to three shooters who opened fire on a center for the developmental disabled this afternoon, killing at least twelve and shooting upwards of twenty others, but already, at least one GOP presidential candidate is out blaming a lack of guns for America's latest deadly mass shooting.

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee tweeted his prayers today much sooner than he had for Friday's shooting at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado but he just couldn't leave it at that:

CBS reports that Huckabee then made further comments to reporters while on the campaign trail in Iowa, arguing that without knowing the motives for this latest mass shooting he knew that nearly every such incident involves "a mentally unstable person" and "a gun free zone":

https://twitter.com/alanhe/status/672160216897712129/photo/1

Huckabee's fellow GOP presidential long shot aspirant, Rick Santorum, similarly argued that if the nurses at Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs had been armed they could have prevented Robert Dear from murdering three people last Friday.

“Where do you think these people commit crimes?” Santorum said. “They go to places — these people who are ill, they go to places where they know no one’s going to have a gun.”

Watch firsthand accounts from friends and family waiting outside the scene of the San Bernadino shooting:

[jwplayer file="http://media.salon.com/2015/12/sanbernadinoshooting.janetupadhye.12.2.2015.mp4" image="http://media.salon.com/2015/12/Screen-Shot-2015-12-02-at-2.04.06-PM.png"][/jwplayer]

Watch our recap of what 2016 presidential candidates have said about the San Bernardino shooting:
[jwplayer file="http://media.salon.com/2015/12/SanBernardino.Asha_.1242015.mp4" image="http://media.salon.com/2015/12/2016-gop-candidates-debate1.jpg"][/jwplayer]


By Sophia Tesfaye

Sophia Tesfaye is Salon's senior editor for news and politics, and resides in Washington, D.C. You can find her on Twitter at @SophiaTesfaye.

MORE FROM Sophia Tesfaye