Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Thursday the country should try to “reverse these trends,” referring to Tuesday afternoon’s shooting in Parkland, Fla., at a high school that left 17 dead.
“We are once again watching the images of children terrified streaming out of their school hands over their heads. It’s an image we don’t need to continue to see,” Sessions said, adding the Department of Justice is “going to confront the problem” and “reverse the trends that we are seeing in these shootings.”
Sessions said the Justice Department is going to collaborate with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education to address mental health issues.
“Today we met with, this morning, our office of legal policy to work with our partners at Health and Human Services, the Department of Education and across this administration to study the intersection of mental health with criminality and violence, and to identify how we can stop people before these heinous crimes occur,” he said in remarks to the Major County Sheriffs of America conference in Washington.
Speaking later on Thursday to The Federalist Society, outgoing Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand said action is already underway.
“The Attorney General has already directed the office of Legal Policy to work with other agencies to study the intersection of mental health and criminality in order to prevent these crimes from happening in the future,” Brand said.
Sessions has made fighting violence and prosecuting gun crimes a top priority. In November, he announced a thorough review of the FBI database that is used to check the backgrounds of individuals who want to purchase handguns.
The suspect in Wednesday’s shooting, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, was believed to have used an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle in the attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Cruz, who has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder, is expected in court Thursday
