Politicians recognize the political value of mass shootings, with Republicans trying their best to prevent Democrats using these events to pass gun control laws. When a mass shooting occurs, two standard Republican tactics are to assert that it is not time to talk about gun control and to accuse Democrats of trying to score political points. I will consider each of these in turn.

The assertion that after a mass shooting is not the right time to talk about gun control does have some merit. Emotional decisions made in haste are usually worse than those resulting from cool and deliberate consideration. A good example of this is the flood of laws passed in response to 9/11. That said, there is a negative side to waiting as motivation and political will can fade until nothing is ever done. When people debated acting against slavery in the United States, there was a similar dispute between those who proposed gradualism and those who demanded action. Those in favor of immediate action often used an analogy to rescuing people from a fire: gradually removing them from a burning house would be a terrible idea. Likewise for addressing slavery and, perhaps, gun violence.

One response to Republicans who use this tactic is to point out that they do not hold to it consistently. While they say this after every mass shooting, they do not take the same approach in other situations of intense emotion and calls for hasty action. As such, they are obviously using the “not the time” rhetorical device rather than following a principle of when action should take place. The goal of this rhetorical device is not to call for calm deliberation but to delay action or prevent action. To be fair, Democrats who use this rhetorical tactic against Republicans in other areas are equally guilty. Now to the second tactic.

When the Democrats try to act in response to a mass shooting, Republican politicians often accuse them of trying to score political points and of playing politics. Ironically, in making this accusation they are trying to score political points by accusing the other side of trying to score political points.

On the one hand, this charge has merit. If a Democrat is just cynically using a mass shooting politically and does not care otherwise, then they would be justly accused of playing politics. But the motivation of a politician is just relevant to a moral assessment of the person and is  irrelevant to whether the their claims are true and whether their proposals are good.

Attacking someone for playing politics and rejecting their claims would be a type of ad hominem which could be called the “accusation of playing politics fallacy.” The form is as follows:

Premise 1: Politician A accuses politician B of trying to score political points by playing politics about subject S.

Premise 2: Politician B makes claim C about subject S.

Conclusion: Claim C is false.

This is obviously bad logic. Even if one politician is trying to score political points, this does not prove that their claim is not true. While assessing their motives is relevant to assessing their ethics, their motives have no bearing on their claim being true or false.

The “accusation of playing politics” can also be a rhetorical device—it is a type of red herring in which one tries to switch the discussion from one issue to another. In the case of mass shootings, the goal is to switch the issue from whether there should be more gun control to whether Democrats are playing politics. The end game is, of course, to keep attention away from the original issue.

This is not to deny that Democrats and Republicans are playing politics. Democrats do try to use mass shootings to get more gun laws passed, Republicans try to prevent this with the two methods described above. Some pro-gun people also try to score political points off mass shootings by appealing to fear that the Democrats will try to do something about mass shootings. But what is important, at least to people who would prefer fewer mass shootings, is addressing the problem of mass shootings and gun violence. This does require doing politics and the time to do so, as always, is now