America’s ideological split over gun control has spilled over into the presidential campaign after JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, voiced regret that school shootings had “become a fact of life” in the US.
Vance’s comments – in the wake of the latest deadly shooting, at Apalachee high school in Georgia – ignited a political row after Democrats depicted them as evidence of a lack of empathy while Republicans claimed the remarks had been taken out of context.
Vance called for more security measures in schools without mentioning gun control, while Democrats including Kamala Harris and the US president, Joe Biden, want a ban on assault-style rifles, more background checks and other gun safety action.
Asked about the Georgia shooting while speaking at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona, on Thursday evening, Vance said: “I don’t like this. I don’t like to admit this. I don’t like that this is a fact of life. But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realise that our schools are soft targets.”
The boy who is charged in the Georgia school shooting is 14 years old.
Vance continued: “We’ve got to bolster security at our schools so that a person who walks through the front door … and wants to kill a bunch of children – they’re not able to. As a parent, do I want my kids’ school to have additional security? No, of course I don’t. But that is increasingly the reality that we live in.”
The remarks, which were prefaced by an attack on the pro-gun control stance of Harris, the Democratic nominee for president in this November’s election, were immediately seized on by the Harris campaign.
“School shootings are not just a fact of life,” the Democratic nominee posted on X (formerly Twitter), linking to footage of Vance’s comments.
“It doesn’t have to be this way. We can take action to protect our children – and we will.”
Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, had accused Harris of wanting to “take law-abiding citizens’ guns away from them”.
Republicans and Democrats have become increasingly polarised on gun control, with one party standing on the issue of gun owners’ rights and the other identifying with efforts to bring stricter controls.
But the row between the two presidential tickets was overshadowed by Republican anger at the Associated Press, which had been accused of misrepresenting Vance’s comments in a post on X.
“JD VANCE says school shootings are a ‘fact of life,’ calls for better security,” read the post. It was subsequently taken down and replaced with a more nuanced version providing greater explanation.
“JD Vance says he laments that school shootings are a ‘fact of life’ and says the US needs to harden security to prevent more carnage like the shooting this week that left four dead in Georgia,” the second iteration read. A second follow-up post said: “This post replaces an earlier post that was deleted to add context to the partial quote from Vance.”
The posts were greeted with derision on X, with the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, writing: “AP stand for Associated Propaganda.”
On Thursday night, Tim Walz, the governor or Minnesota and Harris’s running mate on the Democratic ticket, posted to X, Elon Musk’s social media platform formerly called Twitter, a clip of Vance’s speech, and commented: “This is pathetic. We can’t quit on our kids – they deserve better.”
Trump, responding to a question on the Georgia shootings at a Fox News town hall meeting from the Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday, said: “It’s a sick and angry world for a lot of reasons and we’re going to make it better, and we’re going to heal our world.”
The former president has been accused of showing a lack of sympathy after previous shooting episodes. In response to a deadly assault in Perry, Iowa, last January that killed three people, he said: “It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here. But we have to get over it – we have to move forward.”
A 14-year-old suspect, Colt Gray, is in police custody and is expected to be tried on four counts of murder over Wednesday’s shooting in Georgia, which left two pupils and two teachers dead. The authorities have pressed second-degree murder charges against his father, Colin Gray, for allowing his son to posses the gun.
