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Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough tore into JD Vance’s comment that school shootings are a “fact of life” on Friday, saying the Republican Party’s legislators are responsible for that “fact.”
GOP lawmakers have dragged their heels on “common sense, basic gun safety legislation that the overwhelming majority of Americans support,” Scarborough said. “That is why this is a fact of life, brought to you by the Republican Party.”
About six in 10 U.S. adults, or 58 percent, are in favor of stricter gun laws, according to a June 2023 Gallup poll.
Following a shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, earlier this week that killed four people, the Republican vice presidential candidate lamented the frequency of school shootings and called for tightened security in schools to deter them.
Scarborough’s chastising of his former party was prompted by his co-host Willie Geist, who noted, “in fairness, [Vance’s] full comment was ‘I don’t like that this is a fact of life,’” but then pointed out that security at Apalachee didn’t prevent the shooting.
“Having the school resource officers there, who acted heroically the other day and probably prevented more kids and teachers from dying, it wasn’t enough to save the four people who did die,” Geist said.
A 2021 study by the The Violence Project suggests armed guards in schools do not reduce deaths. Researchers looked at 133 school shootings and attempted shootings from 1980 to 2019, a quarter of which had at least one armed guard present. They found shootings at schools with an armed guard left three times as many people dead on average.
“The guns are in the hands repeatedly of these children, of these mentally deranged people,” said Scarborough. “Why? Because any type of gun safety legislation—and in Georgia we’re talking about locking your guns up in your homes, safe storage, red flag laws, the things that would have helped here—Republicans say no, no, no.
“It doesn’t have to be a fact of life,” said Scarborough.