Anti-woke Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is calling for gender dysphoria to be treated as a mental illness.

He also pledged to put “armed marshals in every school” if elected president, following the horrific shooting at a Nashville, Tennessee, Christian school on Monday.

His comments came after authorities identified the shooter who killed six, including three nine-year-old children, at Nashville’s Covenant School as Audrey Elizabeth Hale, a 28-year-old transgender-identified biological woman. Local police said that Hale, who was confronted and killed by law enforcement, authored a manifesto, which has not been made public, Breitbart News noted.

WATCH: CCTV Footage Released of Nashville Shooter Audrey Hale

Metropolitan Nashville Police Department via Storyful

“The real question is why this psychopath in Nashville was able to get into the school in the first place,” Ramswmay said in a release shared via email.

“We protect green pieces of paper in a bank with more armed guards than we do our kids in schools,” he said. “We pay for Thousands Standing Around (TSA) in our airports. There’s more security at a random mall than in a public school.”

“We spend $80 billion per year through the U.S. Dept of Education that helps fund radical gender and racial ideology to create psychopaths, yet don’t protect kids in our schools from being killed by them. That’s wrong,” the presidential candidate continued.

Ramswamy said that those who identify as the opposite sex, “more often than not,” are exhibiting “a sign and a symptom that they are suffering from a mental illness.”

“I reject the idea that it is somehow ‘humane’ to affirm their confusion, rather than to actually help them. It’s inhumane,” he added.

Ramaswamy, an anti-woke businessman, then reiterated his plans to eradicate the DOE if elected president. He intends to “distribute the savings to put armed marshals in every school to protect every kid in America from these tragedies.”

MIAMI, FL - AUGUST 24: Germany Alech, a Miami-Dade Police officer, stands guard at the front entrance to the Kenwood K-8 Center on August 24, 2018 in Miami, Florida. Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez and Miami-Dade County Public Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho visited the school and were briefed by Miami-Dade Police on new school year security measures as well as the policy of having Miami-Dade police officers on campuses. In addition to the armed police officers the school system has installed fifteen-thousand high definition cameras connected to a central command post as well as the Raptor system, that allows school personnel to check the criminal history of each school visitor. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Germany Alech, a Miami-Dade Police officer, stands guard at the front entrance to the Kenwood K-8 Center on August 24, 2018, in Miami, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Fox News’s John Roberts reported that the school did not have armed resource officers at the campus during the attack.

WSMV reports that the victims who were tragically murdered on Monday are:

Evelyn Dieckhaus – nine years old
Hallie Scruggs – nine years old
William Kinney – nine years old
Katherine Koonce – 60 years old
Cynthia Peak – 61 years old
Mike Hill – 61 years old

This marks the second time a transgender-identified woman has attacked a school since 2019, as Breitbart News noted.

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