LAS VEGAS – Frank Gibase canceled a work meeting to be here.

Tears alone make it hard to focus. Memories of a best friend lost to ruthless gunfire – on a day like today – make it impossible.

It's just after 8 a.m. Tuesday at the famous "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign, a spot usually overrun with happy tourists posing for photos and Elvis impersonators.

Today, there are 58 white crosses planted along a nearby dirt path.

Gibase, 30, crouches next to the cross bearing the name of Cameron Robinson, one of his best friends – and one of the 58 people killed two years ago at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

For several minutes, Gibase focuses on a picture of Robinson pinned to the cross.

When he stands, he uncaps a black marker and presses it to the wood.

Shooting sparks change – but is it enough?

In the two years after a lone gunman named Stephen Paddock fired into the crowd of 22,000 from the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay for more than 10 minutes before taking his own life, the federal government and states tightened some gun regulations.

This year, the U.S. government banned a device that helped the Las Vegas gunman shoot more rapidly. Some states tightened gun laws, including passing “red flag” measures that allow a judge to order weapons to be taken from someone deemed a threat.

In Nevada, lawmakers passed a measure that ended a two-year legal battle over a voter-approved initiative to expand gun buyer background checks to private gun sales and transfers.

Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak called the measures a memorial to the victims, even though they would not have made a difference for the Vegas shooter, who obtained his guns legally.

Efforts to combat gun violence followed mass shootings in the two years since the Vegas massacre, including an attack on a Florida high school last year that killed 17 and attacks in Texas and Ohio that killed a combined 31 people in one weekend this summer.

Advocates say they’re frustrated that more hasn’t been done since the Las Vegas attack and that mass shootings keep happening nationwide.

Nevada Assemblywoman Sandra Jauregui says, “People are genuinely afraid of going places."

The Democratic lawmaker and her husband were among the music fans who fled as gunfire rained down from the high-rise hotel. Neither was wounded.

'We must be the good'

Joe Robbins lost his son to the shooting. Quinton was 20.

“What does one do with the loss?" Robbins asks a crowd of survivors, first responders and families of victims at a sunrise remembrance. “What does one do with the grief?”

For those who suffered unspeakable losses two years ago, no two answers are the same.

“We must be the good,” Robbins says. “We may not always be up to it, but we must try.”

It's what his son would have wanted, he says.

'You never know what's going to happen'

At the row of white crosses planted in the dirt, Gibase puts the cap on the marker.

Loss and grief, he says, have taught him many lessons.

"Appreciate life and cherish those you have around you," Gibase says. "You never know what's going to happen."

He walks toward the parking lot, wiping tears from his eyes, leaving behind the message to his friend.

"You're always with us," he wrote. "We love you."

Contributing: The Associated Press