President Trump told reporters on Sunday that stricter background checks for gun buyers in the United States would not have prevented Saturday night's mass-shooting in ewst Texas, and continued to cast the recurring massacres as the product of lax attention paid to the mental illness of 'another very sick person.'

'For the most part, sadly, if you look at the last four or five, or going back even five or six or seven years, for the most part, as strong as you make your background checks, they would not have stopped any of it,' he said of the carnage.

'So it's a big problem. It's a mental problem. It's a big problem.'

A gunman killed seven people and injured at least 19, including three police officers, in Odessa, Texas.

While the White House sought to bring calm to the aftermath of what is only America's fourth-deadliest gun slaughter this year, former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke vented his anger by dropping an F-bomb on national television.

'We're averaging about 300 mass shootings a year. No other country comes close. So yes, this is f***ed up,' O'Rourke, a Democratic presidential candidate, said on CNN's 'State of the Union' program.

President Trump predicted congressional action on gun control Sunday, after a man killed 7 people and injured at least 19 in west Texas

Former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke said America's gun culture has led to a 'f***ed up' series of massacres; he promised on Saturday to force AR-15 and AK-47 owners to sell their long guns to the government if he becomes president

Postal worker Mary Granados (left) was shot and killed when a gunman hijacked her truck in West Texas on Saturday. Three police officers were wounded in the shooting, including Zack Owens (right)

Seventeen-month-old Anderson Davis is in the hospital with shrapnel wounds on her face and chest

'If we don't call it out for what it is, if we're not able to speak clearly, if we're not able to act decisively, then we will continue to have this kind of bloodshed in America, and I cannot accept that,' he said.

O'Rourke said Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia that he would take a narrow view of the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment if he were to reach the White House.

Asjed how he would reassure gun owners that he wouldn't take away military-styled rifles like AK-47s and AR-15s, he responded: 'I want to be really clear that that’s exactly what we are going to do. ... You’ll have to sell them to the government.'

Fellow Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro said on NBC's 'Meet the Press' show that as Trump's successor he would immediately change the legal definition of a gun dealer, instantly moving more sellers into the category covered by mandatory background checks.

'I would maximize executive authority to do what we can to keep our families safer from gun violence. For instance, we would immediately redefine who is a firearms dealer so that anybody who sells more than five firearms in a year is classified that way and has to conduct universal background checks.'

Under current law, a loophole allows private sales without background checks.

Castro also demanded 'common-sense' gun laws, which face an uphill climb in a divided Congress.

But Trump said on Sunday that the White House has been speaking with a bipartisan group of federal lawmakers who will soon present lrgislation in Congress to address an unspecified facet of America's gun culture.

Police tape marks the scene outside a restaurant, cordoning off a vehicle believed to be the truck the shooter fired his rivle from

Authorities have yet to officially confirm the identities of the victims or the gunman, believed to be a white male in his 30s whom police shot and killed in the parking lot of this movie theater in Odessa, Texas

Frightening footage appears to show a family trying to hide from gunfire during the deadly rampage. The 50-second video shared on Facebook by Antonio Orozco Garcia is captioned: 'Dios mio por favor protegenos' - which translates to: 'My God, please protect us'

I think Congress has got a lot of, a lot of thinking to do, frankly, and they have a lot of – they've been doing a lot of work,' he said. 'I will tell you, on behalf of Republicans and Democrats, they've been doing a lot of work ... having to do with guns. And I think you're going to see some interesting things coming along.'

Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said on ABC's 'This Week' program that he has 'spoken with the president repeatedly and recently' about a bill he is co-sponsoring to expand background checks on gun sales. He said the president is 'very interested in doing something meaningful.'

But Trump 'hasn’t endorsed a specific bill,' Toomey cautioned. 'I can’t guarantee an outcome.'