First, Republican presidential candidates offered their thoughts and prayers for the victims of Wednesday's shooting in San Bernardino, California, where two killers wielding assault-style rifles slaughtered 14 innocent victims and wounded 21 others.

Then they immediately mounted an unapologetic defense of the right to bear arms.


Ted Cruz chose symbolism, deciding to go ahead with a previously scheduled event where the Texas senator plans to unveil his "National 2nd Amendment Coalition." The event is to be held Friday at a 17,000-square-foot indoor shooting range in Johnston, Iowa, that defines its corporate purpose as, "to glorify God in all we do and to be a positive influence to all who come in contact with CrossRoads Shooting Sports LLC."

"Please join Ted Cruz and special guests as he discusses the rights of Americans to keep and bear arms at this exciting event!," read a post on the shooting range's Facebook page. (Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for Cruz, defended the decision not to cancel or reschedule the event. "Even in the midst of horrific events like this, we should never rush to take away the basic liberties enshrined in our Constitution that are guaranteed to law-abiding American citizens," she said.)

Marco Rubio chose persuasion, arguing that gun control simply doesn't work. "I think the left often pivots to gun laws," the Florida senator told Fox News host Neil Cavuto. "But the truth is states like California have very strict gun laws, as they do in Illinois — in Chicago, as they do in Washington, D.C., as they do in many other jurisdictions that have a significant amount gun violence. So it's never been shown that these gun laws have been effective other than keeping guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens."

Rand Paul chose to play offense, announcing the "Defend Our Capital Act of 2015," a measure his Senate office said "would remove existing restrictive firearm ownership laws in the District of Columbia, and require the District of Columbia to issue and grant reciprocity for concealed weapons permits for both residents and non-residents."

The Kentucky senator's presidential campaign, meanwhile, sent out a fundraising email, accusing President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of "exploiting" the massacre to push new anti-gun laws and denigrate the devout. "They're exploiting the deaths of innocent Americans to further their plans to dismantle the 2nd Amendment, destroy conservatives, and as we saw today, attack faith and prayer. The victims are just another helpful talking point to the left," Paul wrote.

Carly Fiorina argued that the government couldn't be trusted to properly enforce measures Democrats have proposed, such as a ban on gun purchases by those on the FBI's terrorism watch list, since "we're not enforcing the laws we have."

"If somebody is a suspected terrorist on a watch list, they can be indicted at any time, and once you're indicted, you cannot own a firearm," the former tech executive said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "This is a red herring to suggest that we should have background checks for those on the terror watch list. Why aren't these people prosecuted?"

Jeb Bush has said little about the San Bernardino shooting. But in an op-ed published earlier this week in the Iowa Republican, after the attack on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, he touted his support for concealed carry and "Stand Your Ground" laws as governor of Florida and said he couldn't wait to "expose the folly of Hillary Clinton’s gun-grabbing agenda."

"Gun violence is a serious issue that deserves our attention," he wrote. "But the proper response is to crack down on the criminals who use guns in crimes and to improve our national instant background check system so we can prevent people with mental illnesses from purchasing firearms."

Mike Huckabee, in an interview with POLITICO on Thursday, shrugged off the idea that any law would have prevented the shooting.

"Which law? You know, once again I'm not sure which law it would be," the former Arkansas governor said when asked whether there was a gun law that could have prevented the shooting. "If you say 'nobody can have a gun', do you think that would keep a person like that from getting a gun? Of course it wouldn't. But it would probably keep law-abiding citizens from having one."

Several candidates pivoted quickly to highlighting the dangers of radical Islam, getting ahead of local and federal authorities, who have yet to declare a motive for the San Bernardino shootings.

"If you think the shooting in California is about gun control, then you don't understand what's going on in the world," Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters after his speech at the Republican Jewish Coalition Forum in Washington on Thursday. "This is about two people who have bought into an ideology that is absolutely insane in nature and has to be combated."

Cruz, at the beginning of his speech at the RJC forum, acknowledged that "the details of what happened at San Bernardino are still unclear" before blasting the Obama administration as blind to the real threat facing America. "All of us are deeply concerned that this is yet another manifestation of terrorism — radical Islamic terrorism here at home," he said.

Chris Christie, also at the RJC event, said he was "convinced" the shooting was a terrorist attack.

“If a center for the developmentally disabled in San Bernardino, California, can be a target for a terrorist attack, then every place in America is a target,” he said. “We need to come to grips with the idea that we are in the midst of the next world war.”

Back in New Jersey, state lawmakers gave Christie — whose past support for an assault-weapons ban makes him vulnerable to rival attacks — a gift: They failed to override his veto of a bill that would require courts to notify the police when a judge expunged a mental health record to allow someone to buy a gun.

In August, before Christie issued his veto, the bill passed both houses of the state Legislature unanimously, 74-0.

Katie Glueck contributed to this report.