Another tragic school shooting occurred in Georgia this week, with a 14-year-old opening fire and killing four people. It’s a phenomenon so common in America — and mostly rare elsewhere — that numbness long ago began to set in politically.
It’s that numbness and sense of tragic deja vu that moved GOP Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance to call school shootings a “fact of life” — or did he?
California Governor Gavin Newsom shared a post (below) featuring video that shows Vance giving a speech after the Georgia shooting. Newsom wrote: “JD Vance: School shootings are just ‘a fact of life.’”
Newsom also wrote: “Kids are being killed and he’s shrugging his shoulders.”
JD Vance: School shootings are just “a fact of life.”
Kids are being killed and he’s shrugging his shoulders.
Remember that in November. pic.twitter.com/zY7erJjgAs
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) September 6, 2024
Vance’s defenders on social media accuse Newsom of misquoting Vance, and say the California Governor is “lying.”
JD did not say that. @communitynotes
gavin is lying and using dead children to score cheap political points. We deserve better. Trump/Vance 2024. pic.twitter.com/C4T3XBDlkV
— Bytemeharder (@bytemeharder) September 6, 2024
Citing a proposed X Community Note that suggests AP used a “misleading headline” the commenter below contends that despite video of Vance’s remarks: “JD did not say that.”
[NOTE: The AP story headline still reads: “JD Vance says he laments that school shootings are a ‘fact of life’ and calls for better security.”]
This was literally just noted and AP deleted their post pic.twitter.com/mlvHkSOFyB
— Gimme3Steps (@TheSouthGAJohn) September 6, 2024
The argument Vance’s defenders make is that the VP nominee’s full sentence reads: “I don’t like that this is a fact of life. But if you’re a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets.”
Vance follows this with his proposed solution for student safety, which is more school security. He says he doesn’t want that, but there’s no choice.
“Do I want my kids’ school,” Vance asks, “to have additional security? No, of course I don’t. I don’t want my kids to go to school in a place where you feel like they’ve got to have additional security, but that is increasingly the reality that we live in.”
Vance clearly states, talking about school shootings, that they are a “fact of life” — Newsom leaves out the part where Vance says he doesn’t like this fact of life, but one can assume no politician (or human being) would like it.
Even Vance’s defenders, while defending him, acknowledge that Vance characterized school shootings as a fact of life, as seen in the post below.
That’s not what he said. He said he doesn’t like that school shootings are a fact of life. You are grifting again. But you out grifted yourself by putting the actual video up. Brilliant.
— Deon Joseph (@ofcrdeonjoseph) September 6, 2024
Vance also says dangerous schools needing protection are “increasingly the reality that we live in” — driving home his “fact of life” statement. (USA Today also quotes Vance’s “fact of life” in a column headline.)
Does Vance shrug his shoulders at the sad situation, as Newsom accuses? Physically, he does not.
One commenter lays out why he doesn’t believe Newsom misquoted Vance, writing: “He said it’s ‘a fact of life’. That he also says he doesn’t like it, doesn’t change that fact.”
He said it’s “a fact of life”. That he also says he doesn’t like it, doesn’t change that fact.
— Gary Cottier (@GaryCottier) September 6, 2024
The numbness also comes from the predictability of the responses.
Conservatives embracing the broadest interpretation of the Second Amendment typically respond to these tragedies with sorrow, calls for prayers and the theory that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
Progressives favoring gun control typically respond with sorrow, calls for prayers, and attempts at legislation that might possibly be effective in keeping guns out of the hands of disturbed killers. And the violence persists.