The View hosts Sunny Hostin and Alyssa Farrah Griffin get into fiery clash over Georgia school shooting

The View‘s Sunny Hostin became embroiled in a very heated debate with Republican cohost Alyssa Farah Griffin as the panel discussed the tragic Georgia shooting.

The two women butted heads on Thursday’s show when Sunny, 55, accused people of immediately jumping to the topic of ‘mental health’ when it comes to such tragedies as a defensive Alyssa argued: ‘Oh I wasn’t, I was talking about guns first.’

Not even looking her cohost in the eye, Sunny fired back condescendingly: ‘I’m not talking about you personally, I’m talking about the country,’ before stating: ‘So the common denominator, though, there’s mental health all around the world but we seem to be the only country that has 14-year-olds killing people, right?

The TV host was referring to the arrest of 14-year-old Colt Gray, who is accused of carrying out the deadly mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder on Wednesday morning, and who was on the radar of the FBI a year before the tragedy.

‘I say this every time we talk about this, people who suffer from mental health illnesses are ten times more likely to be the victims of crime – violent crimes – than they are to commit it,’ Sunny continued.

The View hosts Sunny Hostin (left) and Alyssa Farah Griffin (right) clashed on Thursday’s show discussing the Georgia school shooting

Joy Behar turned to Alyssa and argued that ‘Republicans keep knocking down mental health measures’

‘So I’m not saying that there isn’t a mental health problem here, but that seems to be the first thing that we jump to, right? Mental health, mental health!’ the mother-of-two added. 

Former White House aide Alyssa commented: ‘It feels weird to talk politics in light of a tragedy but we’re in a political season and voting is how you solve issues like mass shootings so unique to this country.

‘It is a universal fear whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, to send your kids to school and think they might be a victim of a school shooting.’

She then argued: ‘There are ways to address it and the key is that candidates make clear they are not coming for safe, lawful gun owners who are never going to use that firearm to pose harm to someone else but they are going to address the issues that the vast majority of Americans support. 

‘You have to talk about solution that make clear you are not coming to take legal lawful gun owners and by the way you can’t separate the mental health aspect. A 14-year-old shooting up a school is not well. He could have posed a harm to himself so have to address both of those,’ Alyssa claimed.

Comedian Joy Behar then blurted out: ‘Don’t the Republicans keep knocking down mental health measures all the time?’ as Alyssa argued back: ‘I’m not saying that the party’s handling it. Who I do point to is Chris Murphy and Thom Tillis who came together and did sweeping reforms, but it’s not enough, you have to address both.’

Sunny then continued: ‘It’s really about getting rid of these assault rifles. I think it’s getting rid of high-capacity magazines and if you look at the DNC platform and if you listen to what they were saying during the DNC, they want to ban assault weapons.

‘They want to ban high-capacity magazines, they want to end the gun industry’s immunity from liability which I think is really important because if your kid gets killed, you can’t even sue the gun owners.

Sunny (left) and former White House aide Alyssa (right) butted heads as they discussed the link between gun violence and mental health

Whoopi Goldberg interrupted the panel to acknowledge the families who lost their loved ones in the horrific attack

Police officers on the scene  after the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia

‘They want to increase funding to the bureau of alcohol, tobacco and most importantly, I think the gun violence epidemic has been deemed to be a public health issue and so that’s where the money will come from.

‘The money will come from the CDC and the National Institutes of Health, so there is a way to fund gun violence research.’

A frustrated Joy, 81, then chimed in again and stated: ‘The number one death of children in this country is school violence, gun violence!’ as Sara Haines confirmed the statistic but argued that it’s ‘such a divisive issue.’

Moderator Whoopi Goldberg ended up interrupting the women and shouted: ‘Hold up y’all!’ so that they could take a moment to acknowledge the families who lost their loved ones in the horrific incident, which saw two students and two teachers killed.

‘This happened yesterday. Can we just right now… we’ll talk about it more, but right now our hearts with are those families who are living through this,’ the 68-year-old actor announced before the show went to a commercial break.

Following the incident, a 14-year-old student who had been on the FBI’s radar for the last year, was identified as the suspected gunman who went on the bloody shooting spree, killing four people.

A junior at the school, Colt Gray immediately surrendered when confronted by law enforcement following the violent rampage at Apalachee High School, and will be charged with murder and tried as an adult.

The Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice confirmed Thursday that the suspect was taken into custody at the Gainesville Regional Youth Detention Center, Channel 2 Action News reported.