Sen. JD Vance of Ohio said Thursday that school shootings were an unfortunate “fact of life,” and he called for strengthened security measures in public schools while he spoke at a campaign event in Phoenix.
After Vance delivered remarks on border security, a reporter from CNN, who was at first drowned out by booing, asked him about what he would do to prevent school shootings in light of the fatal shootings of two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Georgia on Wednesday.
Vance, former President Donald Trump’s running mate, first condemned the shooting in Georgia as “an awful tragedy” that should never have happened, and he said his thoughts and prayers were with the families.
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said, adding that he believed gun restrictions were not the way to effectively prevent school shootings. “We have got to bolster security in our schools.”
Vance said that he was reluctant to support increased security measures in schools but that is “increasingly the reality we live in.”
Democrats have seized upon his comments, arguing that Vance was resigned to the reality of school shootings.
“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,” Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, said in a statement. “Donald Trump and JD Vance will always choose the NRA and gun lobby over our children. That is the choice in this election.”
At a speech in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Wednesday, Harris addressed the Georgia school shooting. She has previously called for universal background checks and an assault weapon ban but did not call for any policy changes in her remarks.
“We’ve got to stop it, and we have to end this epidemic of gun violence in our country once and for all,” she said. “You know it doesn’t have to be this way.”
Trump has in the past encouraged the public to move on from mass shootings. After a shooting in a high school in Perry, Iowa, resulted in three deaths in January, Trump told an audience of supporters they have to “move forward.”
“It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here,” he said. “But have to get over it — we have to move forward.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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