Your support helps us to tell the story
Sandy Hook survivor Grace Fischer has slammed JD Vance’s suggestion that schools should “make the door locks better” to deal with shootings.
The 18-year-old campaigner, who was six when she survived the horrific mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on 14 December 2012, said Vance’s proposed solution was “unacceptable”.
“It’s not about making schools safer, because they should be a safe space already for children. His solution is unacceptable,” she told ABC News. “It doesn’t make sense to make schools with stronger windows … I think we need to get more gun control.”
During last week’s debate against Tim Walz, Mr Vance suggested that “making the doors lock better” was one measure to tackle gun violence in schools.
“What do we do to protect our kids? And I think the answer is, and I say this not loving the answer, because I don’t want my kids to go to school in a school that feels unsafe or there are visible signs of security, but I unfortunately think that we have to increase security in our schools,” Mr Vance said.
“We have to make the doors lock better. We have to make the door stronger. We’ve got to make the windows stronger.”
The Republican vice presidential nominee received flak for his answer during the debate, which Ms Fischer also dismissed. “I think it’s not a real solution at all,” she told ABC News. “School is supposed to be a place of fun, you’re supposed to learn and get an education there. I don’t think building such a school with all this protection makes sense. No kid wants to go to a school that looks like a prison.”
Ms Vance was criticised for saying school shootings were “a fact of life” following the killings at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia in September. “We have got to bolster security at our schools,” he said previously. “We’ve got to bolster security so that if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they’re not able to.”
The Harris campaign rebuked the Ohio senator’s remarks. “School shootings are not just a fact of life,” Kamala Harris responded. “It doesn’t have to be this way. We can take action to protect our children – and we will.”
Ms Fischer lost 26 of her friends and teachers in the Sandy Hook mass shooting. This is the first time the teenager can cast her vote in a presidential election and she hopes it will be a moment for “change”.
Earlier this year, she met Ms Harris and the Office of Gun Violence Prevention to discuss gun control, and said the vice-president was “very receptive” to her campaign. “I felt like I was being seen,” she said.
“I’ve been campaigning for gun control for years, but there’s only so much change you can effect without a vote,” she said. “We’ve worked so hard only to see what happened to us happen to others. We need those in power to know enough is enough.”
