Warnock slams Vance's comments on Georgia high school shooting: 'This only happens here'

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) on Sunday criticized Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance (Ohio) for lamenting school shootings as a “fact of life” after a gunman killed four people and injured several others at a Georgia high school last week.

“J.D. Vance is arguing that this kind of random, everyday carnage is a fact of life. No, it's not. It's a fact of American life. It's another tragic form of American exceptionalism,” Warnock said on NBC News' “Meet the Press.”

During a campaign visit the day after the Winder, Georgia, shooting, Vance called for increased security in schools, saying “I don't like that this is the reality.”

“If these psychopaths are going to target our children, we have to be prepared for that,” Vance said at a rally in Phoenix, Ariz. “You don't have to like the reality we live in, but it's the reality we live in, and we have to deal with it.”

“I hate that this is real,” Vance added, “but if you're a psychopath and you want to make headlines, you realize that schools are an ideal target. We need to beef up security in our schools, so that if a psychopath wants to walk in through the front door and kill kids, he can't do it.”

Mr Warnock, meanwhile, said Americans needed to do some “serious soul-searching” to understand why the US had more school shootings than other countries.

“There is no other country in the world that is not at war where you see this kind of violence, so we as Americans have to really ask ourselves: why is this happening here,” he said. “I hate people who vilify the mentally ill, because most of them are not a danger to us, but there are mentally ill people in other countries. There are troubled children in other countries.”

“This only happens here. It's because of guns,” he said.

Warnock argued that Americans are “easy targets” and expressed frustration that universal background checks have not been passed by Congress.

“Look, there's no single law that's going to stop all of these tragedies,” he said. “In some ways, I think we need to broaden the scope of the problem, because last year's data showed that we have two mass shootings a day in our country. And that's not happening everywhere in the world.”

“The problem is we have politicians in this country who are in thrall to the gun lobby. And whether out of ambition or fear, they go to work every day and do their bidding while the gun lobby lines its pockets with the blood of children,” Warnock said.

Warnock said he spent last Friday night with Winder residents.

Colt Gray, the 14-year-old suspect who allegedly opened fire at Apalachee High School last week, killing two students and two teachers, has been charged with four counts of felony murder.

Vance called the shooting a “terrible tragedy” and asked people to pray for Winder's family, and called the suspect an “absolute barbarian.”

Vance's campaign argued that some media outlets had taken his comments out of context.

“J.D. Vance says school shootings are 'everyday occurrence' and calls for increased security,” the Associated Press wrote in a now-deleted social media post. Updated Headline “Vance lamented that school shootings are 'an everyday occurrence' and called for better security,” the AP reported in an article and post.

“This is another example of the fake news media brazenly lying about a Republican politician. Senator Vance said the exact opposite of what the Associated Press claims,” ​​Vance spokesman William Martin said in a statement to The Hill on Friday.

Vance's campaign criticized Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Harris and her stance on firearms issues. School Safety.

“Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is putting children across America at risk by calling for all police officers to be removed from schools. This is yet another example of how Kamala Harris' weak, failed and dangerously liberal policies make her unfit for the office of president,” Martin said in a statement.

The Hill has reached out to Harris' team for comment.