Pence backs armed school guards, mental health funding and quicker death penalty over gun reforms

Mike Pence says he wants to see an armed guard in every public school in America to try and prevent mass shootings rather than gun control measures.

The former vice president told a CNN town hall that he believed there should be more gun-carrying security guards in American schools capable of taking down shooters.

“We ought to fund an armed and trained security guard at every public school in America and we ought to do it now,” he told host Dana Bash.

Bash pointed out that heavily-armed police had not prevented the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 students and two teachers were murdered.

“That is why I always say trained and armed …. they have got to be trained. If it takes federal funding let’s do it,” said Mr Pence.

“I just think we ought to end the conversation and Washington DC should stand up and provide the funding for a trained armed guard that can be part of the school community.”

Mr Pence was also asked to justify his belief in expediting the death penalty for mass shooters, most of whom are killed or intend to die during the violence.

“I follow these stories as closely as you do and of course our years in the White House we saw one tragedy after another and we see evidence in the aftermath that they went in without regard to whether they would survive, but I just believe in the deterrent of the law,” he said.

“I believe that if perhaps we made it clear … the Parkland shooter in Florida is going to spend the rest of his life in jail, that is not justice.”

Mr Pence told the town hall that his “heart breaks” for Chicago, where his parents grew up, and the gun violence that has impacted the city.

“We need to get serious and tough on violent crime and give our cities and states resources to restore law and order to our streets,” he said.

Bash then had a surprising statistic for the former governor of Indiana.

“I just want to say, because I’ve heard other people talk about Chicago, just for the record, the ATF data shows that more than half of the recovered guns used to commit crimes in Illinois in 2021, do you know where they came from? Indiana,” she told him.