For Davis, gun violence is acutely personal. “The sights, the smells, the sounds—you remember everything. It all comes back,” he told me, the events in El Paso and Dayton being no exception.

Despite knowing intimately the fear that comes with being on the wrong side of a semi-automatic rifle, Davis told me that he still believes Americans have a constitutional right to own one—and that he does not believe in making exercising that right harder. Davis’s views reflect those of the majority of GOP lawmakers, who, shooting after shooting, maintain that gun control is not the solution to the uniquely American problem of gun violence. Instead, Davis has supported proposals including the School Violence Prevention Program, which offers grants to fund increased safety measures in schools, such as the hiring of mental-health professionals. Now he is a co-sponsor of so-called red-flag legislation, which would allow police to confiscate firearms from someone determined by a judge to pose a risk of violence.

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My conversation with Davis also showed how difficult it could be for advocates of background checks to rally support in Congress, even as Trump has expressed his own interest in doing so. In an early-morning tweet on Monday, Trump urged Congress to pass “strong background checks,” but in a public address hours later, he did not mention them. This morning, however, he appeared to change course once more, telling reporters before heading to Dayton that there was a “great appetite” for background checks.

When I asked Davis if he thought Trump was wrong in tweeting his support for “strong background checks,” he paused. “I don’t know,” Davis told me. “I’ll have to see what he actually proposes.” More broadly, Davis said, he feels frustrated that “Democrats and the media” so instinctively call for tighter background checks in the aftermath of mass shootings. (Ninety-seven percent of Americans in gun-owning households support universal background checks.) He said that closing the loophole on private sales, as Democrats have proposed doing, “wouldn’t have prevented either” the El Paso or Dayton shooting. (Police have said that the suspects in Texas and Ohio had passed background checks.)

Davis told me that he is also frustrated by the chorus of those who say Republicans “don’t act” following mass shootings. He said he would be on a flight “in three hours” if Speaker Nancy Pelosi called members back to Washington, where Davis believes they could pass a red-flag bill “tomorrow.” If signed into law, it would be the most significant gun-related legislation since President Bill Clinton’s assault-weapons ban expired in 2004.

Absent from all of Davis’s frustrations, however, was any mention of President Trump. In his manifesto written before the shooting, the El Paso suspect borrowed several Trumplike talking points, writing that his attack was “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas,” but adding that his views “predate Trump.” I asked Davis if he was satisfied with the president’s response.