JD Vance’s school shooting remarks trigger war of words between Kamala Harris and Trump campaigns
Georgia high school mass shooting has brought back the issue of surging gun violence to the forefront of political discourse ahead of the US presidential election in November.
Former President Donald Trump’s VP candidate JD Vance and Vice President Kamala Harris opened up about their completely different views on how to tackle gun violence following the horrific Apalachee High School shooting, which left four people dead and nine others injured.
Following the deadly shooting, Vance was asked about his ideas for putting an end to school shootings at an event in Phoenix, Arizona.
Condemning it as an “awful tragedy”, the Ohio Senator called up for more security at schools, “so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they’re not able.”
“We don’t have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality we live in. We’ve got to deal with it,” Trump’s VP candidate remarked.
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life, but if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets,” he added.
Trump vows to heal ‘sick and angry’ world as Harris rips Vance
During a Fox News town hall on Wednesday, Trump too reacted on Georgia shooting, dubbing the world as “sick and angry” for a lot of reasons. “We’re going to make it better, and we’re going to heal our world,” he asserted.
Meanwhile, Harris was quick to blast Vance’s remarks by reminding him that “School shootings are not just a fact of life.” Taking to social media on Thursday evening, she wrote: “It doesn’t have to be this way. We can take action to protect our children — and we will.”
The US VP, who has supported gun control initiatives, heads the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.
In a post on X, Ammar Moussa, a spokesman for the Harris-Walz campaign, also addressed Vance’s comments, stating that Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, “knows we can take action to keep our children safe and keep guns out of the hands of criminals.”
Hitting out at Vance and Trump, he said that the GOP duo “will always choose the N.R.A. and gun lobby over our children.”
Trump campaign fumes, blasts Harris team for ‘lying’
Trump campaign defended Vance and expressed outrage in a tweet, writing that “Kamala’s interns just released a statement pushing FAKE NEWS that the Associated Press just retracted.”
“Watch the full video and you’ll clearly see that JD Vance does not say what they claim he said. These morons do nothing but lie every single day,” the Trump team clarified over the Ohio Senator’s “fact of life” comment, which was highlighted by Harris and her team in their X posts.
In an exclusive statement to Fox News Digital on Thursday, Vance’s spokesperson attacked The Associated Press for running a headline that said he had rejected school shootings as a “fact of life.”
William Martin disparaged the AP, calling it “yet another case of the fake news media brazenly lying about a Republican politician.”