Vice President JD Vance has addressed the mass shooting crisis in the US at an event in Wisconsin, a day after the church shooting in Minnesota, in which two children were killed.
On Thursday, August 28, Vance said it is time to call out the "root causes," which he said to be the "mental health crisis."
"We really do have, I think, a mental health crisis in the United States of America. We take way more psychiatric medication than any other nation on Earth," he noted.
The 41-year-old continued, "And I think it's time for us to start asking some very hard questions about the root causes of this violence."
In an interview on Thursday on Fox News, Vance called the shooter a "mentally deranged human being."
Earlier in the day, in a separate Fox News interview, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr said he has the National Institutes of Health looking into links between violence and antidepressants that are regularly prescribed to millions of people in the United States.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said Thursday that the Minnesota church shooter, identified as Robin Westman, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, did not have any previous mental illness as of his knowledge.
A 2019 study found that most school shooters had not taken psychotropic medications and that when they did, "no direct or causal association was found" with the shootings.
Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., slammed Kennedy for his comments a day after the shooting at Annunciation Catholic School's church.
"I dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community, in effect, guns don't kill kids, antidepressants do," she penned on X.
Expressing her frustration, Smith added, "Just shut up. Stop peddling bulls...you should be fired."
Democrats have long argued that easy access to guns and relaxed gun laws in some states have fuelled the epidemic of mass shootings.
However, Trump over the years has focused on mental health issues and school security in talking about gun violence.
