Tragedies have a way of revealing who people really are. The decent ones rise to the moment, as hard as it is. They bring clarity and comfort and solutions. The low ones, by contrast, see sadness as a business opportunity. They're happy to leverage the suffering of others in order to increase their own power.

Ghouls like that thrive in the aftermath of mass shootings like the one we've recently seen in El Paso, Dayton and now Odessa, Texas. 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke, for example, wasted not a single moment before rushing onto a television set and sneering at other people's prayers.

"The thoughts and prayers that you just referred to, it has done nothing to stop the epidemic of gun violence," he said in an interview on CNN. "We're averaging about 300 mass shootings a year. No other country comes close. So yes, this is f---ed up."

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Wow. Catch that? Beto used the F-word on live television. How unbelievably cool is that? He's like a jazz musician from the fifties giving the finger to the man.

If you're someone who finds that hip and appealing, well, you're in luck. For just 30 bucks, you can buy a "This is so F'ed up" T-shirt directly from Beto's campaign. The shirt actually spells out the word, so all your 19-year-old buddies in Brooklyn will know you're as cool as Beto is. Wear your Wayfarers when you wear it. Don't forget not to shave.

But Beto is not stopping there with T-shirts and profanity. He has got ideas on how to stop mass shootings. They begin and end with banning guns. Will it work? Well, we don't have to guess; we know the answer because we've tried it before under Bill Clinton.

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Remember, the assault weapons ban that was in place for 10 years? It had precisely zero effect on rates of violence in this country. It's not an opinion. It's not a defense to the Second Amendment. It's a fact. It's been studied extensively, including by the Clinton administration.

Beto hasn't read those studies, though. He is not interested in what they say. He is going to confiscate firearms from tens of millions of law-abiding Americans, whether it works or not. And he doesn't care what you think about it.

Reporter: How do you address the fears if the government is going to take away those assault rifles -- if you are talking about buybacks and banning?

O'Rourke: Yes, so I want to be really clear that that's exactly what we're going to do. Americans who own AR-15s, AK-47s will have to sell them to the government.

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"They will have to sell them to the government." Now, when you will hear propaganda -- and you often do hear propaganda -- it's described as a gun "buyback."

That's nonsense, of course. Americans didn't "buy" their guns from the government in the first place. They are not "buying them back." This is gun confiscation. It's nothing but that. It's an attempt to eliminate a constitutional right that a ruling class finds inconvenient.

It won't reduce gun violence. In fact, sending armed authorities door-to-door to seize people's lawfully-owned weapons is itself a surefire recipe for causing violence. So if you cared about America and the people who live here, you would not suggest that.

But they don't hesitate. New York City Mayor and Democratic presidential hopeful Bill de Blasio has endorsed forcible gun seizures, so has his rival Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Over the weekend in Iowa, another Democratic presidential hopeful, former Vice President Joe Biden proposed banning not simply so-called assault weapons, but apparently every firearm capable of firing more than one round.

"The idea that we don't have the elimination of assault-type weapons [and] magazines that can hold multiple bullets in them is absolutely mindless," he said.

Yes, "mindless." That's the perfect word for what he said. Serious people don't talk like that. Mass shootings ought to be an alarm that awakens the rest of us to the emergency -- the real emergency -- unfolding at the center of our culture.

Why is this happening? How did nihilism and violence and rage and loneliness become regular features of American life? Something is fundamentally wrong. What is it? And critically, is materialism enough to fix it?

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Those are the metaphysical questions we ought to be thinking about deeply, seriously and debating every time some lunatic shoots up a public place. But that's not what we get. Instead, we get mediocrities like Beto and Elizabeth Warren screaming at rural America about how they're the problem, and they need to give up their ancient rights -- or else.

We deserve much better than that. We need much more than that.

Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Sept. 3, 2019.

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