In general, in the immediate aftermath of a deadly school shooting, Republican officials have spent recent years sticking to a familiar playbook. They (1) offer “thoughts and prayers”; (2) say something along the lines of, “This isn’t the time to talk about politics”; and (3) roll out stale culture-war ideas such as regulating video games and pushing state-endorsed religion in public schools.
In time, the horror fades from front pages, and GOP policymakers simply wait for the next deadly school shooting, at which point the cycle starts anew.
But Republican politics in the Trump era has been a little different.
It was earlier this year, for example, when Donald Trump responded to a school shooting in Iowa by urging supporters to “move forward,” adding his belief that people “have to get over it.”
The former president’s comments came to mind after seeing new and related remarks from his 2024 running mate. The Associated Press reported:
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance said Thursday that he lamented that school shootings are a “fact of life” and argued the U.S. needs to harden security to prevent more carnage like the shooting this week that left four dead in Georgia.
To be sure, the Ohio senator did not express indifference to the bloodshed. At a campaign rally in Phoenix, Vance described the Apalachee High School shooting as “awful,” adding, “No parent should have to deal with this. No child should have to deal with this. And yes, after holding these folks up in prayer and giving them our sympathies, because that’s what people deserve in a time of tragedy, then we have to think about how to make this less common.”
The GOP’s vice presidential nominee specifically suggested increased school security as a possible solution, though this approach has fallen far short elsewhere.
But Vance nevertheless concluded, “I don’t like that this is a fact of life.”
JD Vance responds to the deadly shooting in Georgia by saying school shootings are just “a fact of life” and attacking common sense gun safety reform pic.twitter.com/ISNRuXneg6 I realize that everyone deals with routine frustrations in their day-to-day lives. When you’re all set to walk your dog, and it suddenly starts pouring rain, that’s exasperating, but you realize that rainstorms are just a fact of life. Heavily armed children committing mass murder in schools, however, is not “a fact of life.” It’s a societal scourge that’s unique to the United States — the consequence of a society awash in guns thanks to weak laws that Republican politicians such as Trump and Vance refuse to reform. In a statement issued soon after Vance’s public comments, the Harris/Walz campaign team issued a written statement that read, “Yesterday, Vice President Harris said ‘it doesn’t have to be this way’ in response to another senseless school shooting. Donald Trump and JD Vance think school shootings are a ‘fact of life’ and ‘we have to get over it.’ “Vice President Harris and Governor Walz know we can take action to keep our children safe and keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Donald Trump and JD Vance will choose the NRA and gun lobby over our children. That is the choice in this election.”
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post
Recommended
