JD Vance says he laments school shootings are ‘fact of life’ and calls for improved safety

PHOENIX — PHOENIX (AP) — Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance said Thursday he lamented that school shootings are a “fact of life” and argued that the United States must beef up security to prevent another massacre like the one this week that claimed the lives of four people in Georgia.

“If these psychopaths are going to attack our children, we have to be prepared for that,” Vance told 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 stop school shootings. He said further gun control, as many Democrats advocate, will not end them, noting that they happen in states with both loose and strict gun laws. He praised efforts by Congress to give schools more money for security.

“I don’t like that it’s a fact of life,” Vance said. “But if you’re a psychopath and you want to make headlines, you know our schools are easy targets. And we need to beef up security in our schools. We need to beef up security so if a psychopath wants to walk in the front door and kill a bunch of kids, he can’t do that.”

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

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

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

Harris, who heads the new White House Office on Gun Violence Prevention, has supported stronger gun controls, such as a ban on the sale of AR-15s and similar rifles, and better security in schools, such as ensuring classroom doors are not locked from the outside, as was done in Parkland.