Speaking out on Thursday, September 5, Senator and 2024 Trump running mate JD Vance was asked about gun control by a CNN reporter in what seemed like an attempt to either get him to admit gun control is necessary or downplay the importance of horrific school shootings. Vance dodged the trick question and did the best thing, showing the solution wasn’t gun control but rather something else, school security.
As background, Sen. Vance’s comments on school shootings and gun control came after a horrific shooting in Winder, GA, left four dead, two of whom were students and two of whom were school staff, one of them a coach. Republicans often accuse Democrats of using the tragedy of such situations to push gun control out of a desire for control rather than to help prevent future tragedies. It was this situation that led to the AP having to retract a headline that tried to discredit Vance.
Sen. Vance, in any case, was asked, “what specific policies” he supports to end school shootings, and if former President Donald Trump has consulted him for advice on the topic of ending such nightmarish situations. Sen. Vance first roasted Tim Walz over Walz’s false claims about his military service, then noted that Trump “doesn’t need” further advice, as he already knows the solution.
Moving onto what he sees as the solution to the school shooting situation, Sen. Vance said that bolstering security is what would keep students safe. In his words: “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’re, 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.”
The audience quite liked that answer, as it dodged the reporter’s seeming hope that he either put his foot in his mouth around the time of a tragedy or call for increased gun control, which would have likely made him persona non grata around most of the conservative moment. So, the audience roared with applause in response.
Continuing, Sen. Vance further commented on the need for more security, saying that, whatever people’s feelings on the subject, it’s the obvious solution to a sickening problem and so much be adopted. He said,, “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.”
Then, emphasizing that it is unfortunate that it is needed at all but that such a situation is reality, Sen. Vance said, “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.”
Sen. Vance also took the opportunity to call out the pointlessness and ineffectiveness of gun control laws at preventing such tragedies, and used it to contrast his pro-liberty stance with Kamala’s anti-gun stance. He said, “The Kamala Harris answer to this is to take law-abiding American citizens’ guns away from them. That is what Kamala Harris wants to do.”
He added, commenting on the ineffectiveness of strict laws, “You’ve got some states with very strict gun laws, and you’ve got some states, they don’t have strict gun laws at all. And the states with strict gun laws, they have a lot of school shootings.” He continued, “And the states without strict gun laws, some of them have school shootings, too. So clearly, strict gun laws is not the thing that is going to solve this problem.”
