When asked by a journalist what could be done to stop school shootings. Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance touted efforts in Congress to give schools more money for security. “I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said, The Associated Press reports. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. 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.” Further restricting access to guns, as many Democrats advocate, won’t end the tragedies, he said, noting the mass shootings happen in states with both lax and strict gun laws. Calling the shooting in Georgia an "awful tragedy," Vance said he doesn’t like the idea of his own kids going to a school with hardened security, “but that’s increasingly the reality that we live in.”
Vance's views largely reflect Republican thinking about gun control and shootings. Earlier this year, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, toured the bloodstained Florida classroom building where the 2018 Parkland high school massacre happened. She then announced a program to assist states that have laws allowing police to temporarily seize guns from people judges have found to be dangerous. 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 smarter school security, to ensure classroom doors don’t lock from the outside as they did in Parkland.
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