J.D. Vance says school shootings are ‘a fact of life’

Responding to the latest school shooting at the time in the United States, Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance said during a campaign rally on Sept. 5 that such shootings are a fact of life and that rather than change gun laws, schools need to beef up security to try to prevent more in the future.

“I don’t like that this is a fact of life. But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets,” Vance said at the rally in Phoenix. “And we have got to bolster security at our schools so that a person who walks through the front door — we’ve got to bolster security so that if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they’re not able to. And again, as a parent, do I want my kids’ school to have additional security? No, of course I don’t. … But that is increasingly the reality that we live in. And a bunch of my colleagues in the Senate, we actually worked on legislation that would give schools more resources to bolster their security, because if these psychos are going to go after our kids, we’ve got to be prepared for it. We don’t have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality that we live in. We’ve got to deal with it.”

On Sept. 3, a 14-year-old boy armed with an AR-15-style rifle allegedly shot and killed two fellow students and two teachers at a high school in Georgia. 

The alleged shooter, Colt Gray, was known to authorities for having made social media posts threatening school shootings. CNN reported that Gray’s father, Colin Gray, bought him the weapon that was used in the school shooting in December 2023, after authorities had spoken to him about his sons social media threats. Colin Gray was charged alongside his son in the shooting.

Gun laws are not strict in Georgia.

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law in 2022 that allows people in the state to carry concealed firearms without a permit. Georgia does not require universal background checks to buy weapons, nor does it have a law mandating that gun owners keep their firearms in safe storage. It also does not have red flag laws, which would allow law enforcement to temporarily seize weapons from people who have been officially judged to be a danger to themselves or others. 

While Vance says stricter gun laws are not the answer to mass shootings, Vice President Kamala Harris supports red flag laws. 

In March, Harris visited Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the site of a deadly 2018 school shooting, and announced that the administration was launching the National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center, which helps states implement red flag laws. She also announced the administration was making funding available to train both law enforcement and the court system to properly enforce red flag laws.

Harris addressed the Georgia shooting during a campaign event in New Hampshire on Sept. 4, calling it a “senseless tragedy, on top of so many senseless tragedies.

“It’s just outrageous that every day in our country, in the United States of America, that parents have to send their children to school worried about whether or not their child will come home alive,” Harris said. “You know, it doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

The Harris campaign condemned Vance’s comments.

“Vice President Harris and Governor Walz know we can take action to keep our children safe and keep guns out of the hands of criminals,” Harris-Walz 2024 spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement. “Donald Trump and J.D. Vance will always choose the NRA and gun lobby over our children. That is the choice in this election.”