GUNS/JEFF SESSIONS/JUSTICE DEPARTMENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Bobby Amos stood outside of an Episcopal church in Alabama last spring, begging police to kill him. He had been suicidal earlier and held a gun to his head, his wife said, and she had hidden the weapon at the church, where he had followed her to retrieve it. There was little to indicate that Mr. Amos, 39, was a danger to anyone but himself that day. He was arrested unarmed outside the church, in need of treatment and counseling, according to his lawyer, Fred Tiemann. Police recovered the pistol from the building. Federal prosecutors, citing Mr. Amos’s conviction of felony robbery as an adult at age 15, instead charged him with illegally possessing a firearm. He pleaded guilty in November and is serving a three-year sentence in federal prison…Mr. Amos’s conviction was part of the Justice Department’s broad crackdown on gun violence during the first 15 months of the Trump administration…Mr. Sessions’s approach has touched off a debate about whether he is making the country safer from violent crime, as he and President Trump have repeatedly vowed to do, or devoting resources to low-level prosecutions that could instead be put toward pursuing bigger targets like gun suppliers.”
-Ali Watkins, “In Fight Against Violent Crime, Justice Dept. Targets Low-Level Gun Offenders,” The New York Times online, May 7, 2017