Demonstrators vent anger at White House after fatal shooting in El Paso claims 20

WASHINGTON - Hundreds of demonstrators gathered at the White House Saturday evening to vent their anger at the US government's inaction on gun control, hours after a shooting in El Paso killed 20.

Most of the demonstrators were members of activist group Moms Demand Action, they held up signs and chanted slogans such as "not one more!" "No more silence, end gun violence!"

Larry Lipton, a member of the group from Michigan, said they were having their annual meeting in Washington when the news of the tragedy broke, so they marched to the White House from their meetings.

"Something has to be done," Lipton said of the country's gun laws, while lamenting "there are people in government that are blocking it".

"We are not going to stop until we get gun safely legislation," he said, "we are going to keep fighting until we have gun safety in schools, in churches, in shopping malls."

Lipton said his group calls for universal background checks, red flag laws and raises in age requirements for owning a gun, among other changes.

A mass shooting on Saturday killed at least 20 and injured 26 others in a Walmart supermarket near El Paso, a border city in the state of Texas.

The suspect, now in custody, was identified as a 21-year-old white male from Texas. There were believed to be as many as 3,000 people in the store during the time of the shooting.

The US federal and state governments have been reluctant to combat gun violence in the country. According to statistics, 10 mass shootings, each with more than 10 fatalities, were recorded between 1949 and 2000, while 17 shootings have been recorded since 2000. In 2017 a mass shooting in Las Vegas claimed 58 lives, becoming the deadliest mass shooting in US history.