In a campaign rally in Phoenix on Thursday, Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance addressed the recent Apalachee High School shooting in Winder, Georgia, that claimed the lives of four people in the Atlanta suburb.
Vance took the opportunity to call for increased security at schools and rail against potential gun control plans by Vice President Kamala Harris
“I don’t like this. I don’t like to admit this. I don’t like that this is a fact of life. But if you’re, if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we’ve got to bolster security at our schools,” Vance said.
Vance decried the regularity of school shootings in the United States, and doubled down on the importance of increased security.
“If these psychos are gonna 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 we live in, and we’ve got to deal with it,” Vance said.
Sign-up for Your Vote: Text with the USA TODAY elections team.
Vance characterized gun control efforts by Democrats as an attempt to confiscate guns from American citizens.
“The Kamala Harris answer to this is to take law-abiding American citizens’ guns away from them. That is what Kamala Harris wants to do,” Vance said.
Harris campaign responds to Vance’s ‘fact of life’ remark
The Harris campaign was swift to jump on word choice in Vance’s speech, responding in a Friday post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“School shootings are not just a fact of life. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can take action to protect our children—and we will,” Harris wrote.
Cy Neff reports on Wyoming politics for USA TODAY. You can reach him at [email protected] or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @CyNeffNews
