After 20-year-old Adam Lanza carried out an attack with legal firearms on Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, everyone assumed there would be a renewed discussion on gun control in the United States, but it never happened, despite another violent shooting earlier that year in Aurora, Colo. Time passed, and again, in September 2013, a lone gunman stormed a Navy yard in Washington, D.C., killing 12. Months later, in May 2014, a 22-year-old man went on a shooting spree near the University of California, Santa Barbara campus in California, taking the lives of six people and injuring an additional 14. Two more mass shootings in Charleston, S.C., and Chattanooga, Tenn., controlled media headlines in the first half of 2015 alone — and on Thursday, in Lafayette, La., tragedy struck when a gunman opened fire in a darkened theater, killing two women and injuring nine before turning the gun on himself.

When mass shootings have become the norm, you know there’s a problem. And for all that bloodshed and anger, you would think that 2016 presidential candidates would be willing to talk gun control. The majority, however seem more than eager to skirt the issue or — conversely — reinforce just how important access to firearms really is, despite the cries from the cheap seats.

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