You mean take some comments out of context, and then use that to belittle an actual policy position?

They're not taking the comments out of context.

They are citing the comments correctly for the argument that Vance was making. Specifically, he argued that since we can't stop school shootings with gun control laws, a consequence of that is that we have to harden schools (as targets) in order to reduce their attractiveness for deranged killers.

He is being criticized - deservedly so - for a bad argument. It is not true that we can't stop school shootings with gun control laws. We can't do it with any gun control laws that JD Vance might be willing to support, it's true - but there are lots of countries that don't have deranged people going in and killing children in schools every year. They avoid that consequence with very strict gun control laws. It is not a "fact of life" that we have to endure these horrors; it is a result of our choices.

The critique of that position is that it's not a good choice to harden schools instead of getting the guns under control, like in most other western developed countries. That it's bad to throw up your hands and say it's "the reality we live in" that unfortified schools will be targeted by deranged killers, rather than that being something that we have the power to change with a different regulatory regime on guns.

Again, you can argue that the freedoms that come with very limited regulation of private ownership of firearms are worth the increased incidence of children being shoot to death at school. But not that it's "a fact of life" that we have to face that choice.