CNN
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Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance lamented on Thursday that school shootings in the United States have become “a fact of life” and called for stronger security measures in schools following the shooting in Winder, Georgia, that left four people dead earlier this week.
“I don’t like that. I don’t like admitting that. I don’t like that it’s a fact. But if you’re a psychopath and you want to make headlines, you have to realize that our schools are easy targets and we need to increase security in our schools,” Vance said at a campaign rally in Phoenix in response to a CNN question about what specific measures he supports to end school shootings.
To applause from the audience, Vance continued: “We need to beef up security so that a psychopath who comes through the front door and kills a bunch of kids can’t do that. And again, as a father, do I want my kids’ school to have extra security? No, of course not. I don’t want my kids to go to school in a place where they feel like they need extra security. But that’s increasingly the reality we live in.”
In his remarks, Vance also said that strict gun laws are not the deciding factor in preventing school shootings.
“Kamala Harris’s response to this is to take away guns from law-abiding American citizens. That’s what Kamala Harris wants to do,” Vance said.
“There are some states that have very strict gun laws, and there are some states that don’t have strict gun laws at all. And in the states that have strict gun laws, school shootings are common,” he said elsewhere. “And in some states that don’t have strict gun laws, school shootings are common as well. So strict gun laws are clearly not going to solve this problem.”
Vance also asked the audience to pray for the victims, families and community of Winder.
“No parent should have to deal with this. No child should have to deal with this. And yes, after we have supported these people in our prayers and offered them our condolences – because that is what people deserve in a time of tragedy – we need to think about how we can make this less likely to happen.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, criticized Vance’s comments in a post on X.
“School shootings are not a fact of life. They don’t have to be. We can do something to protect our children – and we will,” Harris said.
Vance defended his statement in Phoenix, posting on X: “Kamala wants to remove safety from our schools instead of protecting our children. Instead of addressing her own mistakes, she lies about what I said. More despair from the biggest fraud in American politics.”
The Democratic National Committee also sharply criticized Vance in a statement. “To be clear: No matter what Donald Trump and JD Vance say, tragedies like this do not have to be a ‘fact of life,’ and we do not have to simply ‘get over it’ when Americans, including young children, are brutally murdered.”
In Georgia, 14-year-old Colt Gray was charged with four counts of murder after firing an AR-style rifle on campus Wednesday morning, according to investigators. His father, Colin Gray, was also charged with four counts of manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of child abuse, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said. Two law enforcement sources with direct knowledge of the investigation said Gray told authorities he bought the AR-style rifle used in the shooting as a Christmas present for his son in December 2023.
This article has been updated with additional reports.
CNN’s Shania Shelton contributed to this report.
