American lawmakers are launching efforts to begin the process of changing U.S. laws on gun ownership.
The Trump administration doesn't want to talk about it, ahead of the President's trip to Las Vegas, but up on Capitol Hill, members of Congress disagree, saying this is the perfect time.
Our U.S. correspondent Priscilla Huff reports:
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The man who sprayed this Vegas crowd with bullets was one of 55 million legal gun owners in the U.S.
Authorities still investigating which firearms the Stephen Paddock used from his lethal vantage point in the room at the Mandalay Bay hotel.
and why he opened fire on 22 thousand country music fans.
TAKE SOUND UP SCREAMS
The sheer number of dead and injured from this single event is prompting some to argue, now is the time to address America's gun laws.
President Trump says it's a discussion for a later date...
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"what happened in Las Vegas is in many ways a miracle. The police department has done such an incredible job and we'll be talking about gun laws as time goes by."
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Gun ownership is guaranteed under the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution
the right to bear arms.
But gun ownership is also a hugely divisive issue here,
Even if many non-Americans have a hard time understanding why it's so easy to purchase a gun here.
TAKE WHITE HOUSE VOXES
"Actually, I was quite horrfied. Being an australian, we don't have mass shootings. We have really good gun control. Plus, I'd only left Vegas two days before it'd happened, so I was very close to staying in that hotel.
"I don't understand how a man could even have those guns and shoot so many people."
"I have the manages, I mean, too loose gun ownerships so I would seek to control across the U.S."
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America's public health officials put the number of gun-related deaths at some 33-thousand each year.
Avery W. Gardiner is the Co-President at Brady Campaign to prevent gun violence.
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"93 people in this country died from gun violence on the day before that and the day before that. What happened in Las Vegas shook us to our core, that we allow this epidemic of gun violence to rage on unchecked in our nation is equally shocking."
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Some small steps have been taken
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representative Paul Ryan confirmed that a separate piece of legislation
to make silencers for rifles and guns easier to obtain
has been shelved.
TAKE RYAN
"That bill's not scheduled now, I don't know when it's gonna be scheduled."
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OVer the past year, a series of public opinion surveys show that around 90 percent of Americans support legislation to require back ground checks for all purchases of fire arms
Legislation to change how guns are bought and sold remains stalled.
in 2012, Some members of Congress pushed for a new ban on semi-automatic assault weapons after a gunman killed 20 children in an elementary school in Connecticut - an effort thwarted in Congress.
Senator Richard Blumenthal represents Connecticut.
SENATOR BITE
"They can take those euphemisms and stuff them. so far as I'm concerned. Enough of the evasions. That it's not time yet. That it won't deal with that problem, that the background check proposal wouldn't have stopped the killer in Las Vegas. That argument is ABSURD."
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U.S. President Donald Trump is posting on social media that everyone is in his thoughts and prayers ahead of his visit to Las Vegas...
Priscilla Huff Washington