Remember back in February when the Republican government worked like a well-oiled machine to keep guns in the hands of the severely mentally ill? They can't get themselves together to actually govern, but they were as efficient as hell when it came to overturning President Obama's rule intended to prevent the mentally ill from having guns.
On February 2nd, just days into the new Congress, the House voted to roll back the regulation.
According to NPR's Susan Davis, the measure being blocked from implementation would have required the Social Security Administration to send records of some beneficiaries with severe mental disabilities to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System. About 75,000 people found mentally incapable of managing their financial affairs would have been affected.
The Senate voted on February 15, 57-43, to get rid of the rule. Trump signed it on February 28.
President Obama instituted the rule after the failure of Congress to do anything following the massacre of 20 young children and six teachers killed at Sandy Hook elementary school.
Republicans will surely point out that we don't know that the Las Vegas shooter would have been among those included in the ban. That's totally beside the point. The willingness of these Republicans to do absolutely anything the NRA asks them to, including this upcoming planned vote to lift 80-year-old restrictions on gun silencers, makes them culpable for this massacre. Their response to every mass murder in the last decade has been to make guns easier to get.
Their response to 20 six and seven-year old children being slaughtered was to do nothing, then at the first opportunity to undo the one thing Obama tried to do to bring an end to the slaughter.
So, yeah, we're going to politicize the hell out of this. This is on the head of every Republican in Congress who enabled it.