JD Vance, the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, reacted to the mass shooting at a Georgia school on Wednesday, calling it a 'fact of life' that he doesn't like. Speaking at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona, the 40-year-old called for hardened security measures to prevent shootings such as the one in Georgia that took the lives of four people and injured nine.
"I don't like that this is a fact of life. But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets," Vance said on Thursday.
Here's the video of his speech:
JD Vance responds to the deadly shooting in Georgia by saying school shootings are just “a fact of life” and attacking common sense gun safety reform pic.twitter.com/ISNRuXneg6
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 6, 2024
"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 continued, criticising Harris' stance on gun laws in the United States.
Also read: Was Georgia School Shooting Suspect Kamala Harris Supporter? Claims Surface
"We have got to bolster security in our schools so that a person who walks through the front door, we've got to bolster security so that if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they're not able to.
"And again, as a parent, do I want my kids' school to have additional security? No, of course I don't. I don't want my kids to go to school in a place where they feel like you've got to have additional security. But that is increasingly the reality that we live in."
Harris, who leads the new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, has supported both stronger gun controls, such as banning sales of AR-15 and similar rifles, and better school security, like making sure classroom doors don’t lock from the outside as they did in Parkland.