Trump praises bravery of survivors of Las Vegas mass shooting

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Visiting Las Vegas on Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump praised the bravery of survivors who risked their lives to help other victims as bullets rained down from a nearby hotel during Sunday night's deadly shooting spree.

Trump made his comments after visiting patients and speaking with doctors at University Medical Center in Las Vegas in the aftermath of the attack, which killed 58 people and wounded more than 500.

Some of patients the president and first lady Melania Trump met with "were very, very badly wounded," Trump said, "and they were badly wounded because they refused to leave. They wanted to help others because they saw people going down all over."

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Trump's trip to the site of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history was the first time he has had to deal directly with the aftermath of a major shooting rampage of the type that have killed hundreds of people in recent years in the United States.

During the visit, Trump deflected a question about whether the United States has a problem with gun violence.

"We're not going to talk about that today," he said.

Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old retiree with no criminal record, was identified as the gunman in the attack, spraying bullets at an open-air concert from the window of his suite in a high-rise hotel.

Trump's motorcade passed the Mandalay Bay hotel during the drive to the hospital.

Paddock killed himself as police closed in. At the hospital, Trump said investigators were still searching for Paddock's motivation for the attack.

"We're looking very, very hard," he said after calling Paddock "a very demented person."

Trump has had mixed success in the "consoler-in-chief" role that is periodically expected of U.S. presidents. He inflamed racial tensions after a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and he has struggled to strike the right tone in response to hurricane devastation in Puerto Rico.

Visiting Puerto Rico on Tuesday, Trump said jokingly that the recovery from Hurricane Maria on the island was blowing the U.S. budget "a little out of whack."

The Las Vegas shooting has reignited a debate in the United States about gun control legislation.Trump's fellow Republicans, who control the U.S. Congress, have shown little inclination to respond to Democratic calls for gun measures.

Trump, who firmly aligned himself with gun rights advocates during last year's presidential campaign, was asked on Tuesday whether it was time to debate gun control measures. He responded, "Perhaps that will come. But that's not for now."

Trump held a moment of silence on the White House South Lawn after the Las Vegas attack and ordered flags lowered to half-staff. He has called the massacre "an act of pure evil."

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