'The View' discusses what comes next in wake of deadly Virginia Beach shooting: 'You can't legislate evil'

"The View" co-hosts' first order of business following the tragic shooting in Virginia Beach that took the lives of 12 people was to tackle the question of what the country should do about gun violence.

On Friday afternoon, longtime city employee DeWayne Craddock used his security pass to enter the crowded Virginia Beach Municipal Center building, then went floor-to-floor with a pair of .45-caliber handguns, killing 11 co-workers and a contractor, authorities said. He was shot at the scene during an intense gun battle with police.

Whoopi Goldberg described the massacre on "The View" before saying, "It now sounds like we pay lip service" to all those affected, considering the number of mass shooting the U.S. has endured this year.

"What should we do?" Goldberg asked. "I do think that the right to bear arms is an important thing. Even though it says you should be a part of the militia, I get that. But do we really need to have people with access to millions of guns?"

"Since it keeps happening that people get these guns legally, what do we do? Because this stuff is getting really tough," she added.

Guest co-host Tara Setmayer prefaced her opinion by saying that because mass shootings are so emotional, they can be difficult to process, "because you want to just have a reaction."

"What makes these situations unique is that guns and the right to own guns is a constitutional right, which is different than other policy areas," Setmayer said. "So there can't be a broad-brush response to it."

"It's important for people to take a breath," she continued. "The mourning process has to happen, and the legislatures need to look at the situations and see, 'Well where could we have improved?' Because sometimes people are just evil and you can't legislate evil."

"Are there common sense gun control measure you could take, possibly? Sure," Setmayer said. "Would that really have prevented it? If someone wants to kill, they're going to kill."

Sunny Hostin contended that although the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to bear arms, it isn't an unlimited amendment. "Let's remember that when we're talking about guns," she said.

"That means common sense gun control is provided for in the Constitution," Hostin said. "You have the right to have a gun, but that doesn't mean you can have any gun; that doesn't mean you can have any type of magazine; it doesn't mean you can have any type of bullet."

Ana Navarro used the lessons learned from the 9/11 attacks as an example of the need to, in her words, "balance constitutional rights and the public welfare."

"Before 9/11, it would've been unheard of for us to agree to get wanded, and X-rayed, and touched -- taking our shoes off, and taking our belts off, and practically being naked," Navarro said of the process going through airport security. "Today we do it, and we do it because it's about safety, and it's about national security, and it's because we saw the harm that could come from not compromising some of our privacy and some of our personal space."

"There has got to be a compromise," Navarro continued. "I know what we can't do, and what we can't continue to do is nothing. That is negligence."

Hostin said that she believes mass shootings are "a health, public safety issue at this point."

In May, a shooting at a Colorado STEM school killed one student and injured seven. Student Kendrick Castillo lost his life saving his fellow classmates from the mass shooter.

In April, two were killed at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte after a gunman stormed a UNC classroom.

"I understand people want to keep their guns. But when you hear that our children are dying in our schools; our children are dying in our streets -- as a mother, I want our kid to be safe," said Hostin. "Isn't their life important? Shouldn't their safety count?"

"Is their safety just as important as your right to have that AR-15, or your right to have that high-capacity magazine?," Hostin said. "What about that?"

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