Trump to address nation after Las Vegas shooting

President Donald Trump will on Monday address the nation after a shooting massacre in Las Vegas -- the most deadly in modern US history .

Trump will deliver televised remarks from the Diplomatic Room of the White House at 10:30 am (1430 GMT), aides said, in what has become a grim rite of passage for modern US presidents.

Trump will be tasked with uniting a nation which is already angrily rehashing stridently held views on the vexed question of gun control.

A gunman killed 50 concert-goers and wounded around 400 more when he poured automatic fire down on an outdoor Las Vegas venue late on Sunday night.

Through a series of national crises Trump has sometimes struggled make his empathy felt.

Earlier on Monday he offered “warmest condolences and sympathies” to the victims in a tweet.

The issue of gun control is highly sensitive in the United States and Trump’s views on the issue have changed markedly over his years in public life.

After the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, where 20 six and seven-year old children and six adults were mowed down by a disturbed 20-year-old, Trump appeared to favor stricter rules.

Back then, president Barack Obama -- who often called Sandy Hook the worst moment of his eight year presidency and recalls even his Secret Service detail in tears -- called for the deadlock to be broken and for Congress to act.

At that time Trump tweeted: “President Obama spoke for me and every American in his remarks in #Newtown Connecticut.”

US Senator Chris Murphy, who was the congressman for Sandy Hook, echoed that call in the wake of the Las Vegas attack.

“Nowhere but America do horrific large-scale mass shootings happen with this degree of regularity,” he said.

“This must stop. It is positively infuriating that my colleagues in Congress are so afraid of the gun industry that they pretend there aren’t public policy responses to this epidemic.”