The Las Vegas massacre this week highlights the need for tighter gun control, Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Wednesday.
Asked to react to the Vegas attack, the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, the Massachusetts Democrat said: "We make it a national conversation at the moment of a mass shooting. But it's happening every single day in this country. People are dying from guns."
Warren called for "sensible changes" in the nation's gun laws, adding lawmakers cannot be "held hostage by the NRA" any longer. "It is our responsibility here in the United States Congress to make sensible changes on behalf of the American people," she added during a reporter stakeout on Capitol Hill following a Senate Banking Committee hearing on the Equifax hacking.
"There are a lot of different steps we could take," she contended. "We could do more extensive background checks. We could make the weapons themselves safer and less likely to be capable of shooting many people in a short people of time."
Authorities said they are investigating the arsenal Stephen Paddock had in his 32nd-floor Mandalay Bay hotel room where he opened fired Sunday night on unsuspecting concertgoers below. Fifty-eight people died and about 500 others were wounded as a result of the shooting.
Paddock, who killed himself as police closed in, had 23 guns with him and two bump stock devices, which can convert semiautomatic firearms into fully automatic, officials said.
Two gun dealers, one of whom was quoted in The New York Times, said they sold weapons to Paddock, which were cleared by state and federal background checks.
— The Associated Press contributed to this report.