Realistically, Gov. Ron DeSantis or Sen. Rick Scott can't speak out on every gun violence death in Florida. The toll is too great: More than 3,000 lives lost each year, an average of more than eight people a day.

But when a case draws national attention, it might behoove either of those men to express some sorrow. Some recognition of the shattered potential that each death represents. A promise, however hollow, to find solutions to the gun violence that claims so many lives.

What Floridians would never expect — what they could barely imagine — was the spectacle of their governor and junior senator tumbling over each other to exploit a high-profile mass shooting in pursuit of a political vendetta. Until last month, when they did just that.

Until last month, when DeSantis and Scott eagerly weaponized the brutal, random slaughter in Pine Hills of a 38-year-old woman, a 9-year-old girl and a 24-year-old journalist in a shooting that left two other people wounded. Until last month, when both politicians moved so quickly they didn't take the time to make sure what they were saying was true.

Until last month, when Floridians watched them cling to their falsehoods even after the facts came out — then maintain a stony silence, with not a word of apology to the heartbroken families or the two survivors of the shooting or any attempt to correct their slander of State Attorney Monique Worrell, who DeSantis clearly intended to follow the fate of Andrew Warren, the Tampa-based prosecutor he illegally removed from office last year.

This isn't the first time DeSantis has been accused of stony indifference to the victims of gun violence. But this incident was so egregious that the Lyons and Major families had to hold a news conference to beg the governor and senator: Please stop exploiting the deaths of the people we loved.