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Donald Trump signed into law a bill scrapping gun regulations introduced after the Sandy Hook massacre yesterday, without fanfare or publicity.

Of the three bills and two executive orders the President signed yesterday, it was the only one done without a ceremony or photoshoot.

Just hours later, Trump delivered a speech to congress condemning shootings and violent crime.

He quietly rolled back a law, brought in by Barack Obama, which added people receiving benefits for mental illness and people deemed unfit to handle their own financial affairs to a national background check database.

It was brought in by Obama in 2013 in response to the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school which claimed the lives of 20 young children and six others.

The victims included British boy Dylan Hockley, who was was just six years old when he was shot dead by Adam Lanza at the school in Newtown, Connecticut.

(Image: Reuters)

The roll-back was passed by the House and Senate last week, but Trump still had the option to veto the bill rather than sign it into law.

The National Rifle Association's Chris Cox applauded Trump's action, saying it "marks a new era for law-abiding gun owners, as we now have a president who respects and supports our arms."

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But while Trump has proudly held press photocalls for almost every bill and executive order he's signed into law - this one was endorsed behind closed doors.

Yesterday, he held a ceremony and invited the media to watch him sign two bills aimed at promoting women in NASA and entrepreneurship.

(Image: AFP)

And he signed two executive orders - one rolling back Obama's clean water regulations, the other aimed at bolstering historically African American universities.

He held ceremonies for both.

(Image: AFP) (Image: AFP)

The bill was signed just hours before the clock ran out on constitutional rules demanding bills be dealt with in 10 days, and by the time it was made public, attention was drawn elsewhere.

Within hours of signing the bill, Trump took a motorcade to Capital Hill to deliver his first speech to a joint session of Congress.

He said: "The murder rate in 2015 experienced its largest single-year increase in nearly half a century.

"In Chicago, more than 4,000 people were shot last year alone - and the murder rate so far this year has been even higher.

"This is not acceptable in our society."

Gun crime and mental illness in the US

Since the Sandy Hook massacre, there have been at least 1,307 mass shooting incidents, with at least 1,442 people killed and 5,155 wounded, according to a Vox study of figures compiled by the Gun Violence archive.

Experts have warned against linking gun violence to mental illness , fearing it may create the false impression that most people with mental illnesses are dangerous.

In fact, the overwhelming majority of people with mental illnesses are not violent, and studies have shown only 4% of violence in the United States is attributable to schizophrenia.

But a further study of mass shootings showed some 22% of male perpetrators exhibited evidence of mental illness.

And while many states will confiscate firearms or ban the purchase of guns by people who have been hospitalised with mental health diagnoses, in reality it’s difficult to police because they are not recorded on a single national database.

Others have warned suicide, not homicide, is the major public health problem for mentally ill people with guns.

And it’s not only background checks on people suffering from mental illnesses the Republicans have opposed. Senate Republicans have also nixed plans to introduce universal background checks for all gun owners.

And they blocked plans to ban people on the FBI’s terror watch list from buying guns.

In 2015, some 233 people on the watch list - and so are barred from air travel - were approved to buy firearms.

While linking mental health to violence remains contentious, gun control advocates are united in calling for an increase, not a decrease, in the amount of data available to those performing background checks for firearm sales.