Vance-Walz debate: Parkland parent, school safety expert says one candidate closer to the answer

A school safety expert told Fox News Digital JD Vance and Tim Walz presented two different visions on how to tackle gun violence in America during this week’s vice presidential debate, but only one candidate appears to be "much closer to the answer" when it comes to protecting children in classrooms. 

Vance argued during the debate that "we have to increase security in our schools" by adding more school resource officers and making doors and windows tougher to breach. Trump’s running mate added that the U.S. also needs to get to the root causes of a "mental health crisis" that isn’t the "whole reason why we have such a bad gun violence problem, but I do think it’s a big piece of it." 

Walz responded by saying, "This idea of stigmatizing mental health — just because you have a mental health issue doesn't mean you're violent. And I think what we end up doing is we start looking for a scapegoat. Sometimes, it just is the guns. It's just the guns. And there are things that you can do about it." 

Ryan Petty, whose daughter Alaina was one of the 17 killed during the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, told Fox News Digital after Tuesday’s debate that "in the 6½ years that I have been working on school safety, what I’ve learned about how we protect our nation’s schools tracks much more closely with the response JD Vance gave than anything Tim Walz said." 

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"I don’t even know what he means when he says, 'Sometimes it’s the guns,’" Petty said when asked about Walz’s remarks. "It has nothing to do with guns. The causes of school violence are not the freedoms that we enjoy and the rights that we have under the Second Amendment.  

"The problem is much deeper and requires a more comprehensive solution, and JD Vance was much closer to the answer. We got to protect our schools. we got to increase the security there. Having more school resource officers on campus as both a deterrent and a last measure to stop an attack once it starts is exactly the blueprint we followed here to protect Florida schools after Parkland," he added. 

During the debate, Vance said, "We have to make the doors lock better. We have to make the doors stronger. We've got to make the windows stronger. And, of course, we've got to increase school resource officers because the idea that we can magically wave a wand and take guns out of the hands of bad guys, it just doesn't fit with recent experience. So, we've got to make our schools safer. And I think we've got to have some commonsense, bipartisan solutions for how to do that.

"Another driver of the gun violence epidemic, especially that affecting our kids — it doesn't earn as many headlines — is the terrible gun violence problem in a lot of our big cities. And this is why we have to empower law enforcement to arrest the bad guys, put them away, and take gun offenders off the streets."

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"We understand that the Second Amendment is there, but our first responsibility is to our kids to figure this out," Walz said during the debate.

"In Minnesota, we've enacted enhanced red flag laws, enhanced background checks, and we can start to get data. But here's the problem. If we really want to solve this, we've got folks that won't allow research to be even done on gun violence. 

"There are reasonable things that we can do to make a difference. It's not infringing on your Second Amendment and the idea to have some of these weapons out there, it just doesn't make any sense."

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"No one's trying to scaremonger and say, ‘We're taking your guns.’ But I ask all of you out there, do you want your schools hardened to look like a fort?" Walz added. 

Gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety said in a statement after the debate that "voters heard two starkly different approaches to America’s gun violence crisis: JD Vance, who recently called school shootings a ‘fact of life’ and thinks the solution to the problem is more guns, or Tim Walz, who will work alongside Vice President Harris to make sure our kids come home safe every night." 

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However, Gun Owners of America, a Second Amendment advocacy group, told Fox News Digital, "Knives and hammers kill far more often than the guns Kamala and Tim want to ban."  

"Tragedy is never just the fault of an inanimate object. There is always an evil person responsible — a criminal who would never abide by any gun laws in the first place," said its director of federal affairs, Aidan Johnston. "That's why Gun Owners of America fights to protect our Second Amendment, which empowers law-abiding citizens to fight back and to protect themselves and their loved ones from becoming the next victim." 

Second Amendment Foundation Executive Director Adam Kraut added, "The Harris-Walz campaign has made clear over and over again their intent to demonize peaceable gun owners and ban and confiscate the most popular guns in America."

Randy Kozuch, the executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, also told Fox News Digital in a statement that "Kamala Harris and Tim Walz make up the most anti-gun presidential ticket in modern history." 

"They hide behind the political prop that they are gun owners in an attempt to promote a radical agenda that will disarm law-abiding Americans," he added. "President Trump and Sen. Vance are steadfast supporters of the Second Amendment and will preserve our constitutional freedoms in the White House."