JD Vance called mass school shootings a “fact of life” and rejected calls for stricter gun restrictions after a troubled 14-year-old Georgia high school freshman killed four people with an assault weapon that his father gave him for Christmas.
The Republican vice presidential nominee decried the bloodletting but insisted that tougher gun laws would not have stopped Colt Gray from using the AR-15 he legally possessed to kill two classmates and two teachers at Apalachee High School on Wednesday.
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said at a rally in Phoenix late Thursday. “We don’t have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality we live in. We’ve got to deal with it.”
Teen charged in Georgia school shooting and his father to stay in custody after hearings
Vance called the Georgia slaughter an “awful tragedy,” and said the families in Winder, about an hour’s drive east of Atlanta, need the nation’s thoughts and prayers.
The Ohio senator asserted that tougher gun law won’t end mass shootings, noting they happen in states with both lax and strict gun laws.
He called for tighter security as the answer to the plague of school shootings, which are rare in other nations but a regular occurence in the United States.
“If you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets,” Vance said. “We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris called the Georgia mass shooting a wake-up call for the nation to take common sense gun reforms like universal background checks, restricting minors from possessing guns and a ban on assault weapons like the one used by Gray.
“Donald Trump and JD Vance will always choose the gun lobby over our children,” said Ammar Moussa, a spokesman for the Harris campaign. “That is the choice in this election.”
Colt Gray and his father, Colin Gray, 54, were both arraigned Friday on murder charges tied to the mass shooting. Prosecutors say the dad allowed his son to keep the gun even though he had threatened to carry out a mass shooting at his school.
