Donald Trump on Tuesday suggested that the time for a national debate on guns would come at some point in the future, after a lone shooter with an extensive arsenal turned a country music festival on the Las Vegas strip into a warzone, leaving 59 people dead, including the gunman, and at least 527 injured.
“We’ll be talking about gun laws as time goes on,” Trump told reporters outside the White House as he prepared to fly to storm-damaged Puerto Rico. He offered no further details. When asked about legislation winding its way through Congress that would make it easier for people to buy gun silencers, Trump said: “We’ll talk about that later.”
Although police have not described the shooter’s mental health at all, the president called him “a sick man, a demented man, a lot of problems, I guess”.
Trump said: “We’re looking into him very, very seriously. We’re dealing with a very very sick individual.
“What happened in Las Vegas is in many was a miracle. The police department has done such an incredible job, and we’ll be talking about gun laws as time goes by.”
Despite the increase in mass shootings in recent years and the easy availability of weapons due to the second amendment to the US constitution, even minor attempts at gun control have proven political impossible in Congress. Lawmakers came closest to making substantial change after 20 children and six adults were murdered in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, but legislation was defeated after campaigns by the NRA and pro-gun Republicans.
After 49 people were killed by a gunman in an Orlando nightclub last year, Republicans blocked measures to ban people on the federal terrorism watch list from buying weapons and to close background-check loopholes.
As Las Vegas began to recover from the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, lawmakers in Washington are once again engaging in the grim ritual of sending “thoughts and prayers” to the victims of a mass shooting.
While Democrats amplified their calls for congressional action on gun control measures that they believe will prevent – or at least reduce the number of casualties – of a future mass shooting, Republicans blamed them for politicizing the moment, arguing that mental health – not firearms – is the underlying factor in such deaths.
“We cannot banish evil or madness from the earth. But we must do what is within our power to make our country a safer place to live. We need common-sense reforms,” Democrat Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, said in a floor speech on Tuesday. He called on Trump to bring together congressional leaders to address the “epidemic that costs the lives of more than 30,000 Americans a year”.
Republicans dismissed Democrats’ calls for action, saying that now was a time for “unity”.
House speaker Paul Ryan, the most senior Republican in Congress, said mental health reform is crucial to preventing future mass shootings.
Ryan said: “It’s important that as we see the dust settle and we see what was behind some of these tragedies, that mental health reform is a critical ingredient to making sure that we can try and prevent some of these things from happening in the past.”
Beside him on the podium was majority whip Steve Scalise, who returned to Congress this week after being shot at a morning baseball practice in June.
On Monday, Democratic senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, where 26 people were killed at Sandy Hook elementary school in 2012, forcefully denounced his colleagues “cowardice to act” and implored Congress to “get off its ass and do something”.
In a floor speech later that evening, Murphy said: “We have become normalized and regularized to 50 people losing their lives. This is a uniquely American problem.
“The hurt is deep, the scars are wide in Newtown, but they are made wider by the fact that this body, in four and a half years, has done absolutely nothing to reduce the likelihood of another mass shooting. There’s an unintentional endorsement that gets sent to these mass murderers when after slaughter after slaughter, Congress does nothing.”
Authorities are still searching for a motive for the murders committed by Stephen Paddock, 64, who orchestrated the attack from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel.
Paddock had amassed an arsenal of more than 40 weapons, 23 of which were recovered from the hotel room where police found him dead, according to Las Vegas police. Police said Paddock used multiple rifles during the attack and transported 10 suitcases into his hotel room during his stay there.
Officials told the Associated Press that Paddock also had two “bump stocks” that can be used to modify weapons to make them fully automatic.
In pursuit of the gunmen, police scoured the hotel floor by floor before reaching the luxury suite where Paddock was stationed. Paddock fired through the hotel room door, striking a security guard in the leg. Swat officers stormed into room after the guard – who is expected to recover – was shot. There they found Paddock dead, Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said.
Police said they retrieved 19 firearms plus explosives and several thousand rounds of ammunition from Paddock’s home in Mesquite, Nevada, a town near the border with Arizona.
In Las Vegas, victims arrived in droves to University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, one of many hospitals that were overflowing.
“I have no idea who I operated on,” said Dr Jay Coates, a trauma surgeon. “They were coming in so fast, we were taking care of bodies. We were just trying to keep people from dying.”
He told AP: “Every bed was full. We had people in the hallways, people outside and more people coming in.”
He said the huge, horrifying wounds on his operating table told him this shooting was something different. “It was very clear that the first patient I took back and operated on that this was a high-powered weapon,” Coates said. “This wasn’t a normal street weapon. This was something that did a lot of damage when it entered the body cavity.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report
