JUST when you thought you couldn’t be any more dismayed by America’s gun crisis, comes this depressing nugget of information.

Despite the fight for gun control making waves across the world in the week since a terrorist attack in an Orlando nightclub that left 49 dead and 53 wounded, one online gun shop has sold a whopping 30,000 AR-15 rifles.

Let me repeat that: 30,000 guns sold in ONE WEEK.

Hunter’s Warehouse owner Tom Engle told Fox Business’ Stuart Varney that his online gun shop, with an inventory of 300,000 to 400,000 weapons, has in fact flown off the shelves in the week since the massacre.

“In particular the AR-15 has been selling very, very well,” Mr Engle said from Pennsylvania.

Overnight, the Republican-controlled US Senate rejected four competing gun control measures just days after the Orlando club massacre, highlighting the stalling feud over an issue that refuses to die down during a heated presidential election year.

Even as they sought to appear keen to take action following the deadliest shooting in US history, Republicans and Democrats voted down four amendments — two from each party — that would have limited some gun purchases, including those by suspected terrorists.

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It comes as shocking figures reveal that FIVE MILLION Americans own an AR-15, according to the National Shooting Sports Federation.

The sad fact? Assault-style weapons were outlawed in 1994 but were reintroduced into American culture after the ban expired in 2004 when Congress failed to renew it.

And they’re not just your typical hand guns. The 30,000 guns sold to trigger-happy Americans across the country are from one particular type of rifle, the AR-15. And the AR-15 is no ordinary gun.

With prices ranging from $350-$8000 a pop, the AR-15, an evolution of the US military’s M-16 rifle, is manufactured by dozens of gun makers, including Smith & Wesson and Sturm Ruger.

Unlike its military relative, the AR-15, developed in 1958, is semiautomatic, but it’s enough to do a whole lot of damage. Its advantage includes firing multiple rounds quickly, and its ability to reload ammunition at a speedy pace.

And it doesn’t help when shooting AR-15s are as sexualised as this.

Assault-style rifles have been used in 14 public mass shootings in the last decade alone. An incredible half of those shootings have occurred since June 2015.

It was a Bushmaster XM-15 (a variant of the AR-15) that gunman Adam Lanza “largely relied on” to kill 26 people, mainly children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012 — the deadliest mass shooting at a high school or primary school in US history and the third-deadliest mass shooting by a single person in US history.

A version of same rifle was used to kill nine people at Umpqua Community College in Oregon in October. So were the 14 who were killed in San Bernardino.

It was also the weapon used in the murders of 12 people — including Jessi Ghawi — at a Colorado movie theatre in 2012.

“America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms,” American-born al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn said in 2011.

“You can go down to a gun show at the local convention centre and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?”

Even those on terrorist watch lists aren’t prohibited from purchasing a gun.

But Mr Engle believes it’s not the overwhelming amount of massacres prompting Americans to buy guns, it’s the government’s fault.

“Shootings don’t push up gun sales, he said.

“It’s when the government starts talking about banning particular guns and up go gun sales.

“When people lose their right to buy a particular gun or a particular type of gun, they go after them and they want them then.”

Could this be true? Why is this type of gun so popular with your average American?

“With the AR platform, a person with absolutely no gunsmithing expertise can buy one gun and a bunch of accessories, and optimise that gun for the application at hand. You can even make an AR-15 into a pistol,” Texan gun owner Jon Stokes wrote on Vox.

“Cops and civilians buy AR-15s because that one gun can be adapted to an infinite variety of sporting, hunting, and use-of-force scenarios by an amateur with a few simple tools.

“In this respect, the AR-15 is basically a giant Lego kit for grown-ups.”

“The rifle’s popularity is almost certainly the main reason why mass shooters increasingly reach for it when they go on a rampage. Think about it: If you’re planning to shoot up a room full of people, are you going to reach for a rare, exotic weapon that you have little experience with, or will you select the familiar option that’s easy to train with and that you have plenty of practice time behind?

“The answer, for anybody who shoots, is the latter.”

Even the NRA has brashly stated that AR-15s are “virtually never misused”, claiming “many are kept for home protection, particularly now that carbine versions are available in many configurations suited for defence in the close spaces of a home, often in low light conditions.”

Overnight in the Senate, the two Democratic texts sought to bar those on FBI watchlists or no-fly lists from buying firearms, and to strengthen criminal and mental health background checks for those seeking to purchase firearms at gun shows and on the internet.

Republicans are opposed to those measures — in general, they oppose any effort to limit gun rights, saying they are protected by the US Constitution’s Second Amendment.

They proposed a 72-hour waiting period for those on FBI watchlists seeking to buy weapons, so that the government has time to seek a court order to block the sale if need be.

The second Republican proposal aimed to improve the background check system. Democrats rejected both GOP measures.

Such efforts often struggle to pass the Senate, where 60 of 100 votes are needed for legislation to advance.

The Senate voted on similar measures in the wake of the December 2012 Connecticut school massacre and the San Bernardino attacks last year, but to no avail.

“Every single senator wants to deny terrorists access to guns they use to harm innocent civilians, but there’s a right way to do things and a wrong way,” said Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas.

Senate Democrat Dick Durbin was livid at the failure of politicians to come together on such a pressing issue after yet another shooting.

“Tonight, the Senate turned its back on victims of gun violence from Orlando to San Bernardino, from Newtown to the streets of Chicago,” Durbin said in a statement.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has spoken out at length about the need to curb gun violence in the week since the Orlando tragedy, but she had a shorter message Monday.

“Enough,” she said in a one-word statement.

- Additional reporting by AFP

- Are you a gun owner? Share your experience — matt.young2@news.com.au