Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, during a New Hampshire rally on Wednesday, calling it a "senseless tragedy" and saying that "we’ve got to end the epidemic of gun violence in our country once and for all.” Two students and two teachers were killed in the shooting, and at least nine more victims have been hospitalized for injuries, according to authorities.
"You know, I'm going off script right now, but listen," Harris said, describing a visit to college campuses last year in which she met with Gen Z students to discuss gun violence.
“One of the things that I asked every time that I went to an auditorium … raise your hand if at any point from kindergarten to 12th grade you had to go through an active shooter training," she said. "Every hand went up."
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Harris showed visible frustration as she described the mass shooting, the first since she became the Democratic nominee for president, not just as a tragedy for victims, their friends and their families, but also something that did not need to happen.
"It’s just outrageous that every day in our country, in the United States of America, that parents have to send their children to school worried about whether or not their child will come home alive," she said, adding that kids sitting in a classroom "should be fulfilling their God-given potential" rather than worrying about a "shooter bursting through the classroom."
Police arrested the shooter — 14-year-old Apalachee student Colt Gray — who will be charged with murder and tried as an adult, officials said. Chris Hosey, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, said in a briefing that Gray used an AR-platform-style weapon to gun down people on the school's football field. While Georgia laws do not allow minors to purchase guns, adults can obtain any rifle, handgun or shotgun without first getting a permit or registering their firearm with the government.
Officials have not said how Gray accessed the gun used for the shooting. According to the sheriff's office, his father kept hunting weapons at his home, but did not allow Gray unsupervised access to them.
Since the first federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004, Harris and other Democrats have called for a new ban but have been repeatedly stymied by Republicans, who blocked a renewed push in the Senate last December. In a statement expressing horror over the shooting, President Joe Biden called on Republicans to say that "enough is enough" and join Democrats in passing more gun control measures, including an assault weapons ban, restrictions on high-capacity magazines and background checks for gun purchasers.
Former President Trump also commented on the shooting via Truth Social, writing that "these cherished children were taken from us far too soon by a sick and deranged monster," but did not weigh in on gun control policy.
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