In the debate, Vance and Walz talk about school safety and child care plans

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Should America invest more in school safety measures and police officers to make schools safer? Or do more to restrict access to guns?

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio agreed during Tuesday’s vice presidential debate that gun violence is a scourge on America’s youth. However, they have presented different ideas about how to address the problem.

Vance, former President Donald Trump’s Republican running mate, repeated his comments following a school shooting in Georgia, in which he viewed school resource officers and so-called school hardening as the most realistic solution to gun violence. Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, said warning laws and better background checks could help keep guns out of the hands of people who would use them to cause harm.

Both invoked their perspective as fathers who send their children into the world every day and hope they come back. Walz said his 17-year-old son recently witnessed a shooting at a community center.

The exchange took place as part of a wide-ranging and largely civil debate that focused heavily on immigration and the economy and included big promises on child care. The nearly two-hour debate was hosted by CBS and moderated by CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan, a Face the Nation host.

This could be the last debate before the election. When Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump debated on September 10, there was a brief mention of the child tax credit but no discussion of K-12 education. Harris has said she would debate Trump again, but so far Trump has not agreed.

Vance supports more school safety, Walz does not

The exchange about gun violence began with a question to Vance about whether he agreed with the idea of ​​charging parents when their children commit violent acts, as was the case after shootings in Oxford, Michigan, and Apalachee, Georgia. Studies show that most school shooters get their guns at home.

Vance said he would leave those decisions to local law enforcement. Then — as he did throughout the debate — he linked the issue to immigration, in this case by talking about cartels that trade weapons. He reiterated his belief that keeping guns out of the hands of “bad guys” was unrealistic, but that schools could be made safer.

“I don’t want my children to go to school in a school that feels unsafe or where there are visible signs of safety,” Vance said. “But unfortunately I think we need to increase security in our schools. We have to make sure the doors are locked better, we have to make the doors stronger. We have to make the windows stronger. And of course we have to increase the number of school resource officers,” he means, referring to the police in schools.

Walz replied that he had visited schools in Finland and, despite high gun ownership rates, had not seen the same harsh measures. After two school shootings in 2007 and 2008, Finland tightened gun regulations, requiring, among other things, a gun license and gun registration.

“Do you want your schools fortified to look like fortresses?” Walz said. “If we know that there are countries in the world where their children do not practice these types of exercises. They are children. … You can still keep your firearms and we can make a difference.”

In the wake of high-profile school shootings, U.S. schools have already implemented many of the “hardening measures” Vance called for.

Almost all public schools control access to their doors when children are in the building, with measures such as locks and surveillance. Many now use a single entry point. Around 60% of public schools control access to their premises using barriers such as a locked gate, even during school hours.

And while some school districts have reduced police presence on school grounds in recent years, others have reinstated school police or increased security. About 45% of public schools had an armed police officer or other sworn law enforcement officer present at least once a week during the 2021-22 school year, the latest federal data shows.

Most schools plan for the possibility of an active shooter and conduct lockdown drills, although there is debate about how to do this properly so that children are not traumatized by the drills.

Last year, an NPR/Ipsos poll found that 88% of K-12 parents supported teaching their children basic lockdown measures, and 63% agreed that children starting in kindergarten should have at least one drill per year. There was much less support for realistic measures like knocking on classroom doors or playing shots.

Despite their shocking frequency and randomness, mass school shootings account for a very small proportion of gun deaths. Vance said law enforcement must be empowered to combat gun violence in cities and that the country must do more to address the root causes of the mental health problems that he said account for many gun deaths.

Walz noted that many gun deaths, particularly in rural areas, are suicides and that children die by suicide when they gain access to their parents’ guns. About a third of gunshot deaths among children and teens in 2021 were suicides, federal data shows. Walz said he doesn’t want to stigmatize people with mental health issues as being more violent.

“We start looking for a scapegoat — sometimes it’s just the guns,” Walz said.

Walz is a gun owner and describes himself as a supporter of the Second Amendment. As governor, Walz has enacted increased background checks and alert laws that allow authorities to remove firearms from someone a judge deems a threat to themselves or others.

Vice presidential candidates discuss paid leave and strengthening child care

The high cost and limited availability of child care facilities are widely seen as creating a crisis as parents, especially mothers, forego work opportunities because they cannot find safe people to care for their children.

Meanwhile, child care workers often earn poverty wages, and child care providers don’t offer as many places as they could because they can’t find workers. The United States is also the only developed country that does not have a national paid leave policy.

As governor, Walz signed a bill that would provide 12 weeks of paid family leave and 12 weeks of paid sick leave starting in 2026, with the cost covered by a payroll tax.

Asked how long employers must pay for workers to stay home after the birth of a child, Walz didn’t give a direct answer, but said paid leave policies are good for families and can coexist with pro-business policies. He also said child care workers need to be paid better.

Vance said he believes there are bipartisan solutions to child care. He said current federal programs don’t provide enough flexibility for families to choose options like church child care and family co-op programs. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website and other sources state that church and home-based child care options are eligible for federal funding. Vance had previously suggested that grandparents could help out more with childcare.

Trump has said he would regulate child care and that it would be “not very expensive” compared to the trillions the federal government would collect under his tariff proposal. But he didn’t reveal any details.

Both campaigns have expressed support for expanding the child tax credit, but differ on the amount of money families should receive. It’s also unclear whether Vance and Trump would support giving the full payment to parents who earn little or no income, as the pandemic revival policy supported by Harris would do.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at [email protected].

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact them at [email protected].