OK, I have a question.

I know this guy.

He’s a nasty piece of work who regularly physically abused his wife until she fled seven years ago after a short-lived and horrifically violent marriage.

She said he was mentally ill and hateful, especially towards homosexuals. ‘He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something. He was not a stable person.’

Sometimes he attacked her as she slept.

His ex-wife fled their short marriage, and says he's mentally ill and hateful - especially towards gay people. He would even attack her while she slept

This guy’s a bodybuilder who pumps himself full of steroids which make him very agitated and aggressive.

In 2013, he started making highly offensive, inflammatory and dangerous comments to his co-workers at a security company which suggested he had Islamic terrorist ties.

The FBI were alerted to his extremist views and interviewed him twice, but didn’t charge him.

In 2014, he was linked to Moner Abu Salha, a radicalised American who became an Islamic suicide bomber in Syria.

Again, the FBI interviewed him but took no action.

He became a member of the Timbuktu Seminary, an educational website run by former U.S. marine turned radical Muslim cleric Marcus Dwayne Robertson, also known as Abu Taubah.

He began attending a mosque 3 or 4 times a week, never speaking to anyone.

In 2015, one of his co-workers, a former police officer, quit the security firm where they both worked because he couldn’t stand this guy’s endless verbal racism and homophobia.

‘He was unhinged and unstable, he talked of killing people,’ said the employee who left. ‘I quit because everything he said was toxic. He was always shaken, agitated and mad.’

A former co-worker, Daniel Gilroy, pictured here, says Omar was unstable, racist and homophobic. He had to quit because he couldn't stand working with the guy

After leaving, that employee was subjected to a daily barrage of 20-30 texts from the ‘mad, agitated’ guy.

A few weeks ago, this guy’s father, an outspoken Afghan political activist, saw his son venting his fury at the sight of two gay men in downtown Miami. ‘They were kissing and touching each other and he said, ‘In front of my (3-year-old) son, they are doing that’.”

Now, here’s my question: Would you let this guy buy a gun?

No, that would be ridiculous, right?

I mean, he sounds like the very last person who should be allowed to legally purchase firearms in America, doesn’t he?

The kind of human being who screams ‘DANGER: DO NOT GIVE HIM A GUN!’ everywhere he goes?

Yet this violent, hateful, bigoted, racist, threateningly extremist guy went down to a gun store two weeks ago and bought not one but two guns.

Omar was wielding the same gun used in Aurora and Sandy Hook and San Bernardino - the AR-15 assault rifle, which the man who was known the FBI was able to buy legally

The first, a pistol. The second, an AR-15 assault rifle of the type used in almost all recent mass shootings in the U.S. including Aurora, Sandy Hook, Oregon and San Bernardino.

He then took those guns to a gay nightclub in Orlando and shot over 100 people as they partied on Sunday morning, killing at least 49.

He was laughing as he did so, and even took time out to call 911 so he could tell police he supported ISIS.

Police later shot him, thankfully before he could slaughter any more.

But it was still the deadliest mass shooting in American history, which when you think how many there are is quite a record to break.

This guy was Omar Mateen, 29, a U.S. citizen born in New York to Afghani parents.

It’s not difficult to work out his motivation.

Mateen’s a twisted, enraged crackpot who hates gays, loves violence, and thinks ISIS are cool.

But this creature of hate, known the FBI, was able to go buy two guns and use them in a massacre

I doubt he had any formal link to the Islamic State.

More likely he just liked what they stand for, especially their fanatical hatred of all things homosexual, and fancied his day of infamy after the group’s recent call for attacks during Islam’s holy month of Ramadan.

However, his deadly spree is hugely significant, far more than a regular mass shooting.

Why?

Because it conflates the two most feared and lethal scourges of American society: guns and home-grown Islamic terror.

And, of course, it brings with it this tremendous irony: the very same people who are most vocal in their determination to get rid of the latter – Republicans - are equally desperate to keep the former.

Last week, President Obama took part in an astoundingly prescient townhall for PBS.

During the debate, he revealed he’d spent that very morning in the Situation Room at the White House being briefed on various U.S. citizens who were known to have visited and participated in ISIS websites.

‘We’re allowed to put them on the no-fly list when it comes to airlines,’ he said, ‘but because of the NRA, I cannot prohibit these people from buying a gun. This is somebody who is a known ISIL sympathizer, and if he wants to walk into a gun store or a gun show right now and buy as many weapons or ammo as he can, nothing’s prohibiting him from doing that, even though the FBI knows who that person is.’

A week later, that’s exactly what happened. Not with that particular suspect, but with someone very similar.

Obama has been impotent on guns. He's accomplished nothing, but at least he wants to effect change

Isn’t it absolutely incredible that the President of the United States, the supposedly most powerful man in the world, has no way of stopping known hate-filled persons of FBI terror-related interest legally buying guns in America?

In fact, isn’t it just a bloody scandal of epic proportions?

Obama’s been hopelessly impotent on guns. He looked the Sandy Hook parents in the eye and promised them he’d get action on gun control, then failed miserably to achieve anything meaningful.

But at least he wants to effect change.

The Republican politicians leaping up and down with fury at Islamic terror today are the same Republicans who’ve systematically blocked every attempt by Obama to introduce any new gun laws which might have stopped Omar Mateen arming himself to the teeth and committing his sickening outrage.

They do so because if they don’t, the NRA will punish them and possibly get them kicked them out of office. Such is the repulsive power that the country’s most repellent lobby group wields in Washington.

So we have a situation where this latest mass murderer was inspired by ISIS, freed by the FBI and enabled by the NRA.

And as things stand, there is absolutely nothing anybody can do to stop this happening all over again tomorrow.

This is utterly insane.

Republican politicians leaping up and down with fury at Islamic terror today are the same Republicans who’ve systematically blocked every attempt by Obama to introduce any new gun laws. Will their nominee Trump finally suggest some gun control laws? Are he and the NRA on my side - or with the terrorists?

Right now, it is highly probable there are many more radicalised US-born Islamists like Omar Mateen, who are known to the FBI and who might be currently plotting to kill fellow Americans on American soil.

Surely, we can all agree that it’s in America’s vital national interest for it to be made as difficult as possible for these people to legally acquire the weaponry to do so?

So how, exactly, does the NRA and its pathetically supine Republican politician fan base including, I regret to say, my old friend Donald Trump - who all claim to care so much about the safety of U.S. citizens - suggest we achieve this without any new gun control laws?

They can’t and they don’t.

But how about this for an idea? I want every known ISIS sympathiser in America on FBI files, including every name on the no-fly list, to be banned with immediate effect from buying a gun, so we can try to save American lives.