Vance Might Accept School Shootings as "a Fact of Life" But America Cannot

During a campaign appearance in Phoenix on Thursday, Republican VP nominee J.D. Vance commented on the school shooting in Winder, Georgia (a suburb of Atlanta) which occurred the previous day claiming the lives of two students and two teachers. The 14-year-old shooter and his father are now in custody. 

Vance addressed the shooting in this way:

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. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.

I'm afraid Vance misses the point.

For starters, instead of stating that school shootings are a fact life, why doesn't Vance ask why school shootings are a fact of life? Look at the numbers of school shootings before 2000 and after 2000. During the 1980s, the decade in which Vance was born, there were 74 school shootings in the United States. In the 2010s, there were 265 such incidents. In this decade which is not even half over there have already been 208 such incidents and counting. Of the 10 school shootings with the highest death tolls, 8 of them have occurred within the past 25 years with only the Columbine shooting happening prior to 2000. 

Let us also consider Vance's statement, "But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets." Such a statement suggests the perpetrators of these events have no connection to their targets. In fact, in most instances, the perpetrators are either current or former students who have an axe to grind with the institution itself. 

I would also be remiss in pointing that Vance's solution is to bolster school security as if the educational institutions are at fault. As Sam Stein pointed out in The Bulwark, "Vance’s suggestion that the only possible response is to fortify our schools and get used to the dystopia was not just defeatist and cynical; it ignored the fact we’ve already taken many of those steps. The bipartisan gun safety bill that Biden signed allocated billions of dollars to prevent school violence."

Notably absent in Vance's assessment is any thought of addressing access to weapons which have the capacity to kill large numbers of people. But in Vance's world, the Second Amendment trumps being able to go to school without fear of being shot to death. 

Speaking of Trump, let us remember what he said in the wake of the school shooting in Perry, Iowa in January 2024 which claimed the life of one student and days later the high school principal. Trump said, “It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here. But have to get over it, we have to move forward.”

There is symbiosis in Vance calling school shootings a fact of life and Trump saying we have to get over it. 

Granted, reducing the number of school shootings in this country is a daunting task and would likely be a generational undertaking even if the goodwill existed to make the effort. Nevertheless, when Vance says school shootings are a fact of life and Trump says we have to get over them, we must say, "No, that is unacceptable. We have to do better."