Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance on Thursday called school shootings a “fact of life” that he dislikes, saying in the wake of the Apalachee High School killings in Georgia that stricter gun laws are not the answer and that schools must beef up security.
His comments echoed what other Republicans have argued: that U.S. gun violence results primarily from mental health problems and not insufficient gun legislation.
“I don’t want my kids to go to school in a place where they feel like you’ve got to have additional security, but that is increasingly the reality that we live in,” Vance said.
He added that shootings happen in states regardless of the strength of their gun laws and that “to take law-abiding American citizens’ guns away from them” would not solve the problem.
Two students and two teachers were killed with an AR-15-style rifle Wednesday when a shooter opened fire at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga. At least nine others were injured. It was the 416th school shooting since the Columbine massacre in 1999, according to a Washington Post analysis.
A 14-year-old suspect, Colt Gray, is in custody and is expected to be tried as an adult on four felony counts of murder. Authorities on Thursday also laid 14 charges against his father, Colin Gray, including two counts of second-degree murder, accusing him of allowing his son to possess the gun.
At the rally Thursday, Vance called the killings an “awful tragedy” carried out by an “absolute barbarian.”
“No parent should have to deal with this,” he said. “No child should have to deal with this.”
A Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson said in a statement Thursday evening that “Donald Trump and JD Vance think school shootings are a ‘fact of life’ and ‘we have to get over it.’” The latter is a reference to a comment by former president Donald Trump the day after a school shooting in Perry, Iowa, in January that killed a sixth-grader and the school’s principal.
The shooting was “just terrible” and “so surprising,” Trump said at the time, before adding: “But we have to get over it, we have to move forward.”
The Harris-Walz statement also highlighted Vice President Kamala Harris’s remarks after the shooting that “it doesn’t have to be this way.” The Democratic Party’s 2024 platform includes gun-control measures such as universal background checks, safe storage requirements, and a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
William Martin, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance campaign, said in an email that Vance’s “fact of life” comment, first reported by the Associated Press, had been taken out of context. The AP updated a social media post and headline Thursday evening to reflect Vance’s full quote.
