JD Vance Dislikes School Shootings as “A Fact of Life”—but Doesn’t Want to Do Anything to Stop Them
JD Vance responded to the Georgia school shooting this week, tell Supporters at a rally in Phoenix on Thursday: “If these psychopaths are going to attack our children, we have to be prepared for it. We don’t have to like the reality that we live in, but it’s the reality that we live in. We have to deal with it.” Asked what could be done to prevent these horrific events, the Ohio senator said that restricting access to guns is not the solution. “I don’t like it, I don’t want to admit it, I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” he said. “But if you’re a psychopath and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are easy targets. And we have to increase security in our schools so that someone walks through the front door… we have to increase security so that if a psychopath wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of kids, they can’t do it. And, again, as a parent, do I want more security in my child’s school? No, of course I don’t. I don’t want my child to go to school where they feel like they need to have more security, but that’s the reality that we’re living in.”
After Vance made his comments, the Associated Press rewrote and has title Its story: “JD Vance says school shootings are a ‘fact of life,’ calls for better security.” Of course, Exactly what he said, but perhaps given the chance to hear how bad it was, the Vance campaign immediately declared it “fake news.”
Claiming that the AP blatantly lied about the vice presidential candidate’s comments, a spokesman speak Fox News: “This is another case of the fake news media blatantly lying about a Republican politician. Senator Vance said the exact opposite of what the Associated Press said. It’s no wonder the AP has lost all the credibility they had years ago, because they will lie about anything to prop up Democrats. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris has called for all police to be removed from schools, putting children across America at risk. This is yet another example of how Kamala Harris’ weak, failed, and ultra-liberal agenda makes her unfit to hold office.”
In fact, the AP wasn’t actually lying, and as Fox News noted in its story, the outlet accurately reported Vance’s quote. Seemingly trying to throw the Vance team a bone, the Fox article then claimed that the AP “appeared to imply Vance called school shootings a ‘fact of life’ in a way that was insensitive or dismissive.” Given that Vance actually said school shootings were a “fact of life” and then called for increased security, “appeared to imply” is doing an incredible amount of work here. However, the AP replaced its original headline and reshared the story on X with the additional context that Vance lament that school shootings have become a reality.
Of course, the real issue here isn’t the context in which Vance notes that school shootings have become alarmingly common in the United States, and it’s entirely plausible that he’s unhappy about these horrific events. The issue is that he, like other Republicans, is unwilling to do the things that could actually stop them, which is further restricting access to guns. New York magazine note:
Meanwhile, in countries with strict gun laws, mass shootings are taking place, somehowis not an “unfortunate fact of life”.
