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Trump heads Friday to Florida to meet shooting victims

US President Donald Trump delivered a televised address to the nation a day after the Florida school shooting

US President Donald Trump announced Friday he was headed to Florida to meet with victims of the mass shooting that claimed 17 lives at a high school in Parkland. "I will be leaving for Florida today to meet with some of the bravest people on earth - but people whose lives have been totally shattered," Trump tweeted early Friday. The US leader -- who is spending the long President's Day weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida -- did not specify when the meeting would take place. "Am also working with Congress on many fronts," added Trump, who has vowed to tackle mental health and school safety in the wake of the shooting, but has yet to make any mention of gun control. A troubled former student, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, has confessed to gunning down 17 people at the high school north of Miami on Wednesday, in the country's worst school massacre since the horror at Sandy Hook six years ago. While the latest atrocity has reignited questions about US gun laws, Trump -- the first president to have addressed the powerful National Rifle Association gun lobby -- staunchly opposes any additional controls. In a televised address to the nation on Thursday, Trump suggested the root cause of the mass shootings that regularly stun the United States was a crisis of mental health -- an argument regularly made by opponents of gun curbs. Since January 2013, there have been at least 291 school shootings across the country -- an average of one a week, according to the non-profit group Everytown for Gun Safety