Mike Hosking: No American politician can ever change America's gun problem

COMMENT: Raw emotion is no substitute for clear heads, and as such Beto O'Rourke has already lost his version of the gun debate.

I am sure most people will forgive him the fact he is from El Paso, and therefore the sort of reaction he has made to one of the shootings at least bears the hallmarks of a local representative under tremendous pressure to explain how all this madness has unfolded yet again.

Of course from this side of the world we all know why, and sadly I think most of us know why nothing will be done. This is, even more sadly, a numbers game.

The two latest shootings, especially El Paso, are the year's worst so far. In a country with mass shootings on most days, the numbers have to creep up into double figures to get real attention.

Kamala Harris can be accused of a similar mistake, she claims if elected president she'll sort it out. A foolish thing, if not an impossible thing to say, at the best of times.

No president has had the answer. And even the ones who wanted it most - Barack Obama could easily have filled that category - failed and failed badly. One, because the lobby is too strong. Two, too many Americans actually don't want it, because they don't see it as a gun problem, they see it as a people problem.

The fascinating thing for us, given what we are currently going through by way of a response to gun crime, is the Americans would be far better off having a gun buyback than we are. The contrast being, we don't kill people with guns, unlike the Americans, who do. The number of gun deaths in this country per head of population hasn't ever really changed. Yes, we have a lot of guns, but not gun crime.

But back to Beto O'Rourke, who blames all this on Trump. He calls Trump a racist, he thinks Trump incites these sort of people. Bad call. You can no more blame Trump than Anders Breivik.

The immigrant border issue has been prevalent in Europe, for example, well before Trump arrived. Hence the democratically elected rise of the right in a number of countries.

Yes, the talk is more public. But the anger and madness didn't get created in November of 2016. And that's the trap they fall into every time: blame, pick a person, and point the finger.

Beto O'Rourke is no more likely to take guns off Americans than Kamala Harris is, or Obama was, or Clinton, or Bush, or the Bush before him.

And the person running for president who says they're taking guns off people in a country with a constitution that has a right to bear arms, isn't getting elected president.

So these next few days are the usual few days after this sort of madness - anger, frustration, blame, debate, and then, nothing, until next time, where we repeat the cycle.

Look at the stats, and the history of mass killings, and tell me I am wrong.