Americans are “an easy target” unless Congress passes more substantial gun control, U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock said Sunday, four days after two students and two teachers were shot dead at a high school in his home state of Georgia, allegedly by a teenager wielding a military-style rifle.
Warnock’s comments Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press came in direct response to comments made by Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance, who had previously said that the killings at Appalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, showed that it is a “fact of life” that American schools are “soft targets” for a “psycho- [wanting] to get into the news”.
Vance added that American schools must therefore take steps to improve their security, but that such an approach will not prevent the mass shootings in the US that have occurred in many other places, Warnock — a Democrat — said on both Meet the Press and CNN’s State of the Union.
Of the nearly 390 mass shootings reported in the U.S. so far this year as of Warnock’s remarks, three have taken place at schools, including the attack in Appalachee, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive and Education Week. Meanwhile, the killings in Appalachee were the only mass killings of 23 reported in the U.S. so far to have taken place at a school.
The Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as a shooting in which four or more victims are killed or injured. A mass murder is a killing in which four or more victims are killed.
Vance “talks about shoring up our schools and making them safe — well, the reality is, this is happening in spas, this is happening in malls,” Warnock said on CNN. “It’s happening in houses of worship, it’s happening in medical clinics.
“What are we going to do? Turn the whole country into a fortress?”
He told NBC: “We’re all screwed. And any country that lets this go on without just taking common-sense safety measures is a country that has, tragically, lost its way.”
Warnock pointed to an April 2023 Fox News poll that confirmed the overwhelming majority of Americans support strengthening gun safety laws. And he said Congress took an encouraging first step toward treating such public support as a mandate when it introduced bipartisan legislation expanding background checks for the youngest gun buyers while also funding mental health and violence intervention programs.
But what was the first major federal gun safety law passed by Congress in nearly three decades was “clearly not enough,” Warnock said, noting how the US still records a disproportionate number of mass shootings globally.
Warnock said polls show that most Americans overwhelmingly support universal background checks. In addition, Warnock said large numbers of Americans support banning general access to assault rifles and semi-automatic firearms.
Yet federal lawmakers have failed to muster enough votes to overcome procedural hurdles that prevent Congress from meaningfully considering either issue. Warnock on Sunday blamed that reality on members of Congress who, out of ambition or fear, accept financial support from the wealthy gun industry.
“We are at an impasse because there are people in politics who do the bidding of the corporate gun lobby while lining their pockets with the blood of our children,” Warnock said.
Related: Kamala Harris responds to Georgia school shooting: ‘We have to stop this’
As if on cue, the National Rifle Association (NRA) on Sunday released a clip to its Twitter/X account showing Warnock responding to a question about whether Kamala Harris should support a mandatory gun buyback program as she runs against Donald Trump in the White House election in November.
Warnock didn’t say “yes,” but instead responded, “We’re not going to be able to get to where we need to be without action in Congress. We need to be able to pass some legislation to address this.” He also repeatedly told CNN and NBC that he was not proposing to revoke the constitutional right of Americans to bear arms.
The NRA — which remains an influential lobby group — nevertheless wrote on Sunday that Warnock wants to “confiscate millions of guns from law-abiding Americans.”
The suspect in the Appalachee school shooting is charged with murder for killing two of his 14-year-old classmates and a pair of math teachers. The father of the suspected shooter is also charged with second-degree murder for giving his son the AR-15-style rifle used in the school attack.
“Fourteen-year-olds don’t need AR-15s,” Warnock said.
