WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama, reacting to Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush's comment about a mass shooting in Oregon that "stuff happens," said on Friday the American people should make up their own minds whether the comment was appropriate.

"I don't even think I have to react to that one. I think the American people should hear that and make their own judgments based on the fact that every couple of months we have a mass shooting and ... they can decide whether they consider that stuff happening," Obama told a news conference at the White House.

Speaking earlier at an event in Greenville, South Carolina, about Thursday's Oregon shooting in which nine people were killed, Bush said: "Look, stuff happens, there’s always a crisis and the impulse is always to do something, and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.”

(Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Tim Ahmann)