By now we've come to expect the solutions offered by Republicans' in the wake of the latest mass shooting will be either useless, absurd or both.
But former Republican Secretary of Education Bill Bennett's idea for how to tackle America's gun violence problem in the wake of the July 4 Highland Park shooting is a whole new level of bizarre.
During an appearance on Fox News, Bennett suggested what's needed to tackle mass shootings are "exorcists."
As in priests who free people from demonic possession. Who needs gun laws when you can just pray the Satan out of the shooters, right?
See Bennett's comments below.
Bennett, who served in Republican President Ronald Reagan's cabinet in the 1980s, started out his prescription for mass shootings with plans that were shockingly reasonable for a Fox News pundit.
Bennett told Fox News' Bret Baier:
“I think you could strengthen red flag laws. Certainly people need to pay attention to them."
Bennett went on to say that parents, police and school staff need to do better at recognizing signs of violence in young men.
"It’s hard when parents aren’t doing their job for any red flag to make up for it. Also, the police need to pay more attention, and the schools need to pay more attention."
Being that this is Fox News, it's an accomplishment that Bennett is admitting both the need for gun laws and the violent tendencies of many American men at all.
Is it possible we're making progress on this issue?
Here's what Bennett went on to say next:
"I’m not sure we are going deep enough... You know, you may need an exorcist, too."
"Before your audience shakes its head on that, if you look at these boys, these men, these young men, they have deeply spiritual problems. Deeply..."
"Where are the ministers? Where are the rabbis? The priests?"
Bennett declined to explain what exactly America's clergy are supposed to do about mass shootings.
But he did at least acknowledge that his suggestion is absolutely deranged before going on to double down on it.
"I don’t want to suggest something that would seem farcical to a lot of your audience, but I do think that the domain of religion ought to be involved here."
"It’s a deeply spiritual void, I think, that these young men have in their hearts and their souls, and I think it needs to be addressed."
"And I don’t think we get at it, frankly, with these externalities, as important as some of them may be. And they may be."
"We need to do it all, but we need to do more."
So to recap, mass shootings are because of a lack of Jesus or a surfeit of demons or something and gun laws will never solve the problem but we should still have them anyway because they might be effective but mostly we need exorcisms.
As you might assume, Twitter greeted this proposal with a collective jaw-drop and lots of mockery.
Bennett also blamed the influence of the "ugly stuff" in the "labyrinthian caves of the internet," a take similar to Tucker Carlson's who recently blamed the Highland Park shooting and other mass shootings on social media, video games, and porn.
Of course, those "labyrinthian caves" full of social media, video games and porn are present everywhere on Earth, and yet we're the only place where mass shootings happen. Interesting.
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