JD Vance regrets that school shootings are a “fact of life” and calls for more security

PHOENIX — PHOENIX (AP) — Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance lamented Thursday that school shootings are a “fact of life” and argued that the U.S. must tighten security measures to prevent further bloodbaths like the one that left four people dead in Georgia this week.

“When these psychos attack our children, we have to be prepared,” Vance said at a rally in Phoenix. “We don’t have to like the reality we live in, but it’s the reality we live in. We have to deal with it.”

The Ohio senator was asked by a reporter what can be done to prevent school shootings. He said further restricting access to guns, as many Democrats are calling for, will not end them, as they occur in states with both lax and strict gun laws. He praised efforts in Congress to provide more money for school security.

“I don’t like that it’s a fact,” Vance said. “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 beef up security in our schools. We need to beef up security so that a psychopath who wants to come through the front door and kill a bunch of kids can’t do that.”

Vance said he doesn’t like the idea of ​​his own children going to a school with heightened security, “but that’s increasingly the reality we live in.”

He called the Georgia shooting a “terrible tragedy” and said the families in Winder, Georgia, need prayers and compassion.

Earlier this year, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, toured the blood-stained school building in Florida where the 2018 Parkland High School massacre took place. She then announced a program to help states whose laws allow police to temporarily confiscate guns from people judges have deemed dangerous.

Harris, who heads the new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, supports both stricter gun controls, such as a ban on the sale of AR-15 and similar rifles, and better security in schools, such as ensuring that classroom doors cannot be locked from the outside, as was the case in Parkland.