“For the second time in a week, our nation is being confronted by the epidemic of gun violence. Too many families in too many places are being forced to endure this unfathomable pain and anguish,” the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, said in a statement. “Action is needed now to prevent this scourge from continuing to ravage our communities.”

Her call was echoed by former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who survived a gunshot wound to the head during a 2011 assassination attempt and has advocated for arms control ever since. “It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s beyond time for our leaders to take action,” she tweeted.

Biden said last month he wanted Congress to pass laws that would require background checks on all gun sales and ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. “This administration will not wait for the next mass shooting to heed that call,” Biden said at the time.

Earlier this month the House of Representatives passed two measures aimed at enhancing background checks for gun purchases and closing a loophole related to a deadly 2015 church shooting in Charleston.

The bills address a hugely popular premise among American voters: that background checks be required for all US firearm sales, including those at gun shows. Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary hearing will be the first of a series of hearings to examine proposals to reduce gun violence.

“It’s not ‘timely’ that the Senate is having a hearing on gun violence prevention tomorrow,” tweeted Senate Judiciary spokesman Jenna Valle-Riestra on Monday, hours after the Colorado attack.

“That’s not the point. The point is that gun violence is so common in this country, we can schedule a hearing on a random date and it ends up within a week of two mass shootings.”

The city of Boulder imposed a ban on “assault-style weapons” and large-capacity gun magazines in the wake of the Parkland, Florida shooting in 2018. But a judge last week blocked that ban, The Denver Post reported, in a decision hailed by the NRA, a powerful pro-gun advocacy group.

For its part, the NRA tweeted a copy of the Second Amendment on the right to bear arms after the Colorado shooting.

The suspect, identified by police as Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa of Arvada, Colorado, faces 10 counts of murder in connection with Monday’s mass shooting, though authorities said his motive remains unclear.

On Tuesday Biden senior adviser Cedric Richmond told MSNBC that “the regular sentiment of hearts and prayers are not enough. We need action”. “The good news is that this president has a track record of fighting against the NRA and beating them,” he added.

Colorado has previously suffered two of the most infamous mass shootings in US history – at Columbine High School in 1999, and at a cinema in Aurora in 2012.

Those massacres prompted nationwide soul-searching but did not result in major changes to the country’s lax gun ownership laws.

Additional reporting by Reuters