mass shooting

When Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., started speaking on the floor Thursday morning, he had not yet heard about the mass shooting at a Southern California high school a little less than an hour before. During Blumenthal’s speech on gun control legislation, a staffer passed him a note alerting him to the shooting. Although he incorrectly stated that the shooting took place in Santa Clara, Calif. instead of Santa Clarita, Calif., Blumenthal quickly pointed to the massacre where two people died as a real-life example of the need for the legislation.

A group of House Democrats on Friday highlighted a bill they’ve authored that they say could have prevented Wednesday’s mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school that left 17 dead.

The bill would authorize a federal grant program for states that enact Gun Violence Restraining Order, or GVRO, laws. These statutes allow law enforcement or family members to petition courts to temporarily remove guns from a person’s possession if they pose a threat to themselves or others. If passed, a separate appropriation measure would be needed to provide the funding for the grants.

House Democrats are staging an ongoing chamber sit-in, calling for further debate and a vote on gun control issues.  

WATCH LIVE The chamber cameras, which are under control of the House leadership, are not showing the sit-in. Those cameras are also what feeds C-SPAN.  

If you think the murder of 49 people at an Orlando nightclub was an act terrorism, you're probably a Republican.  

That's according to a Gallup poll released Friday, which showed that Republicans and Democrats have starkly different interpretations of the worst mass shooting in America's history.  

White House aides and experts on gun control said Monday the Obama administration is not mulling any new executive actions, dramatically increasing the odds that federal gun laws will go unchanged after Sunday's mass shooting in Orlando .  

That means a president who has pushed hard for legislative overhauls of gun laws and even acted alone to implement restrictions is essentially leaving the matter to be decided in November. Out of room to maneuver, Obama appears unlikely to choose between new executive actions and what's best for his political party.

Hillary Clinton on Monday called for a "return to common-sense gun safety reform," saying in a CNN interview that the issues of lax gun laws and terrorism were "connected" by the mass shooting in Orlando.  

"We've got to take the fight to the terrorists wherever they are in order to keep ourselves safe at home," she said. "But we also have to be conscious of the fact that a lot of folks who have no connections to terrorism  are using these weapons to murder and maim people as well."  

The Justice Department will seek the death penalty for Dylann Roof, the suspect in a mass shooting at a South Carolina church last year that prosecutors allege was racially motivated.  

Roof, 22, who is white, allegedly opened fire at a Bible study last June 17 in Charleston, killing nine black parishioners at the Emanuel AME Church.