You take the good; you take the bad; you take them both and there you have the facts of life.

That’s how the old song goes, right? Well, some people may be getting a bit confused about what exactly constitutes a so-called fact of life.

Earlier this month, Republican vice-presidential nominee and now-infamous donut shop customer JD Vance was discussing this month’s Georgia school shooting and said: “I don’t like this. I don’t like to admit this. I don’t like that this is a fact of life.”

As much as Democrats and gun control advocates may not want to accept this, what he said is true of America in 2024. However, Vance’s comments, as they often do, mislead and omit a very important “because.”

This has become a fact of life because he and generations of Republicans refuse to do anything about it. 

This has become a fact of life because we live in America, where too many people value their Second Amendment rights more than the rights of America’s kids to safely go to school.

Vance is endorsed by the NRA (which contributed half a million dollars to his Senate campaign in 2022), and he opposes banning AR-15s, the weapon of choice for some of this country’s most infamous mass shootings.

The sad part is the near total inaction on a national level to suppress gun violence is as American as mass shootings themselves.

But we’ve creeped our way into a disturbingly apathetic new era. Vance blatantly accepting that school shootings are something we have to live with. Donald Trump was telling supporters in Iowa earlier this year that “we have to get over” a school shooting that happened in their community. 

Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor in North Carolina, has a well-documented history of social media posts, declaring himself “SERIOUSLY skeptical” of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting; calling the Parkland shooting survivors “media prosti-tots”; and has blamed mass shootings as karma for legal abortions.

Additionally, Project 2025, a blueprint for what America under a second Trump presidency could look like, calls for reducing red flag laws, eliminating Centers for Disease Control funding that researches gun violence and making it much easier for legal concealed carry. 

If the Trump/Vance ticket wins in November, they may very well make it even easier to get a gun in this country. Because, as we were reminded by their campaign hosting a debate watch party at a Georgia gun store less than a week after a school shooting in that state, they will continue to care more about politics than the safety of America’s students.

And that is a fact of life.

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