From candidates on the presidential campaign trail to those currently in Congress, gun control has leaped ahead of other issues after 14 people were killed in a terror attack in San Bernardino.
For the first time since 1920, The New York Times put its editorial on the front page about what’s necessary to "End the Gun Epidemic in America," after recent shootings in San Bernardino and Colorado.
The editorial calls for people to be put more pressure on elected leaders to pass safer gun laws.
U.S. Representative Mark DeSaulnier, D-Walnut Creek, echoed that appeal saying, "It’s beyond time Congress talked about it. What’s more, San Bernardino happened as the U.S. Senate voted down research money the study gun violence and what we could do about it."
However, in Iowa, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump countered, "If you look at what happened in San Bernardino, they’d have been better off if they’d had guns. They could protect themselves if they’d had guns."
For his part, Chris Cox, the executive director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, wrote in an editorial to USA TODAY, "The National Rifle Association is not to blame" for what Cox called "an act of evil" in San Bernardino.
Cox cited that the massacre happened despite California’s current gun laws, which he termed "the strictest" in the country.
