Sanders was delivering remarks at an August 3, 2019 presidential forum in Las Vegas as news broke of the 2019 El Paso shooting. He stated that Americans overwhelmingly supported gun control reform and referred to the 2017 Las Vegas shooting "where some lunatic killed fifty-some-odd people and wounded hundreds of people." In response to the El Paso and Dayton shootings over the weekend, Sanders cosponsored the Extreme Risk Protection Order Act, a bill authorizing states to use grants to develop red flag laws which would grant family members the ability to petition courts for an order that would temporarily prevent someone from purchasing a gun and the state laws would also allow family members to petition an order for law enforcement to take a firearm away.