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Did JD Vance Say School Shootings Are a “Fact of Life”? What We Know

Heory
Did JD Vance Say School Shootings Are a “Fact of Life”? What We Know

Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance has drawn fire after calling school shootings a “fact of life,” with Republicans saying his remark was misquoted.

Two students and two teachers were killed Wednesday morning at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, after a 14-year-old gunman opened fire and went on a rampage before surrendering to school officials, authorities said. The mass shooting quickly brought gun violence back into national politics just two months before this year’s presidential election.

Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio who was selected in July as former President Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, was asked Thursday by CNN reporter Kit Maher at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, what “concrete solutions” he would support to prevent another school shooting like the one in Georgia.

The senator called Wednesday’s shooting a “terrible tragedy” and argued that prayer and increased security to protect against “psychopaths” in schools would be more effective in preventing further bloodshed than policies backed by Vice President Kamala Harris, which he claimed without evidence include plans to “take guns away from law-abiding American citizens.”

Senator J.D. Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate, speaks at a campaign event in Phoenix, Arizona, September 5. Vance referred to school shootings as a “fact of life” that is not…


OLIVIER TOURON/AFP

“Strong gun laws are not going to solve this problem,” Vance said. “I hate to say that, but if you’re a psychopath and you want to make headlines, you know our schools are easy targets. … We need to beef up security so that if a psychopath wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of kids, he can’t.”

“If these psychopaths are going to come after our children, we need to be prepared for that,” he added. “We don’t have to like the reality we live in, but it’s the reality we live in. We need to deal with it.”

Harris-Waltz campaign quickly common excerpt from Vance’s response and highlighted his “fact of life” comment while condemning the senator for “attacking common sense gun safety reform” on Portal X, formerly Twitter.

Harris later weighed with the following: “School shootings are not just a fact of life. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can take action to protect our children — and we will.”

Vance he replied accusing the vice president of “lying” about his comments, claiming she “wants to remove protections from our schools instead of protecting our children” and referring to her tweet as “yet another desperation over the greatest fraud in American politics.”

Others, including mass shooting survivors and family members of victims, also sharply criticized Vance for the remarks.

“No, JD Vance, shooting my cousin Alex in English class is not a ‘fact of life'” he wrote Samuel Schwartz, whose cousin Alex Schachter was killed in the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting. “What happened to Alex was preventable. We will never accept that as the norm.”

“No. I don’t believe that seeing kids walk out of school in body bags is a ‘fact of life.’” – Brandon Wolf, Pulse nightclub shooting survivor he wrote“I will not tell parents who have buried their children that this is simply ‘reality.’ It does NOT have to be that way. And it would not be – if political cowards had anything more to offer than a shrug.”

“The person making this statement may be speaking at events where firearms are prohibited.” – Attorney Bradley P. Moss he pointed out.

Parkland parent Fred Guttenburg responded with harsh words fasting in which Vance was condemned for suggesting that “the murder of his daughter Jaime was a fact,” calling the Republican senator a “pathetic asshole” and stating that he “looks forward” to voting for Harris and his vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.

Newsweek reached out to Vance’s office and the Trump-Vance campaign for comment by email Thursday evening.

Trump-Vance campaign supporters were furious when an Associated Press (AP) headline omitted Vance’s statement that he “dislikes” school shootings being a “fact of life,” claiming the omission of the headline meant the senator had been misquoted.

“What a ridiculous lie! @AP is fake news,” said former Trump adviser Steve Cortes he wrote. “What @JDVance actually said: ‘I DON’T LIKE that it’s a fact of life.'”

“Look at what JD Vance said and what the media reported,” @BehizyTweets wrote. “This isn’t just some mistake. This is criminal election interference and everyone in the mainstream media should be in jail… JD: I hate that it’s a fact… AP: School shootings are a fact… Apparently we really don’t hate them enough.”

“A New Joke Just Came Out!” – Far-Right Influencer Libs of TikTok he wrote“AP says JD Vance said sh** is a ‘fact of life.’ JD Vance’s full quote was ‘I don’t like that this (sh**) is a fact of life.’ You don’t hate the media enough.”

However, the AP article included the full quote and context of Vance’s statement, which called school shootings a “fact of life” even as he said he did not condone what he called the “reality” of school shootings.

AP later updated headline says Vance “laments” that he considers school shootings “a fact of life.”

Republican anger at the media was also evident at a campaign event in Arizona on Thursday, where Maher was greeted with a loud chorus of boos after she mentioned she was from CNN as she began talking to Vance. The audience fell silent when Vance called her “one of the good ones.”