Anything-but-the-guns mentality has reared explanation that even Republicans find unnerving.

Conservative pundits and lawmakers alike have floated several different reasons behind the recent murder of 10 people by a teenage shooter at Santa Fe High School in Texas, from trench coats to the school’s excess of doors to ADHD medication. The array of diagnoses suggests a couple of things: one, that Republicans remain steadfastly unwilling to consider the merits of gun control, even as the number of mass shootings steadily climbs; and two, that as many Americans demand a more immediate response to gun violence from Washington, Republicans feel pressured to reach for new causes, however incongruous they may seem.

“It speaks to the utter corruption of the party intellectually and morally. To say that this is exclusively about the gun is as stupid as saying it has nothing to do with the gun,” Republican operative, Steve Schmidt, who has been consistently critical of his party’s response to gun violence said. “Our politics have eradicated the ability to have a rational discussion about most things. Most things, though, are not lethal things. This is a lethal thing.”