On Tuesday, House Speaker John Boehner spoke at a “closed-door meeting” of Republicans and said, while Republicans would not do “anything knee-jerk” to curtail gun rights, he wanted to "depoliticize" the debate and "have a discussion on guns." 

According to The Hill, "Boehner said the GOP's strategy would be to examine the reasons that the mass shootings of recent years have been carried out, almost exclusively, by young, white males with mental illnesses."

"We need to have a discussion about guns," a Republican who attended the meeting told The Hill. "And that doesn't mean that all of a sudden we abandon the Second Amendment or the NRA [National Rifle Association] or anything like that. But there needs to be a discussion and everybody needs to participate and we need to depoliticize it."

According to The Hill, Boehner said Republicans needed to be “circumspect” in their remarks and referenced Rep. Louie Gohmert’s remark that Sandy Hook Elementary School principal Dawn Hochsprung may have been better off had she been armed. Boehner said such comments were "not helpful." 

Last Sunday, Gohmert said that he wished to God Hochsprung "had an M-4 in her office locked up so when she heard gunfire she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands but she takes him out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids."