In a podcast interview recorded the day after the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School and unearthed last week by Salon, Paxton was asked by North Texas pastor Trey Graham what he might say to the victims’ families.

“I’d have to say, look, there’s always a plan. I believe God always has a plan,” the attorney general replied. “Life is short no matter what it is.”

It was all in God’s plan. That’s a suggestion we often hear from pious, well-meaning people when other words fail in the face of an unspeakable, inexplicable tragedy. The idea is that some day we will all understand that larger purpose of our suffering. It is meant to be a balm.

But those words sound more like a shrug when an elected leader — and in this case, one who is his state’s top law enforcement officer — offers that as an explanation for a horror that was preventable and exacerbated by human error. Worse, it is a dereliction of responsibility and of the imperative to do something to prevent something like this from happening again, as it has happened over and over.

What Paxton doesn’t want to consider, he made clear, is that the events in Uvalde had anything to do with gun laws, which have been loosened considerably in Texas in recent years. He won’t countenance even proposals for a red-flag law allowing courts to order the seizure of guns from people deemed an imminent threat. That, he said, “becomes pretty risky for our freedom.” The only new gun measure he indicated he might support is one that requires schools to train and arm teachers to defend themselves in the classroom.