Dean Norris, the "Breaking Bad" actor who played Hank Schrader in the popular AMC series, is currently filming a movie in London. He told The Independent that when the mass shooting occurred at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, he received several panicked text messages from his sister. He had no idea she was planning to attend the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival and was horrified to receive an “up close and personal” description of what was going on in Las Vegas at the time.

Text messages start pouring in from Las Vegas

Norris, who has also starred in the TNT series “Claws,” said he was up and awake when the text messages started coming in on Monday morning U.K.

time, which he calculated was around 12 or 1:00 AM in Las Vegas. He said his sister was attending the concert with friends. Norris went on to say it was horrifying to have a personal connection with the tragedy that was unfolding there. He went on to say he doubts his sister has yet fully comprehended what happened to her, saying he will have to talk to her and keep an eye on her, about the tragic events.

Norris went on to say it was a personal shock to wake up and hear the news that two people had been shot in Las Vegas, but then suddenly it was 20 people shot and then became 50. When he then received a further text message to say his sister and her friends were barricaded into a supply room, it was a real shock.

‘Tipping point’ in gun control discussion

According to Norris, a good friend of his wife was also at the concert, and they said to each other that this is now the new normal, where the couple knows people who were involved in a mass shooting.

Norris hopes that with the huge number of people there at the concert at the time this might become a “tipping point” leading to change in the gun control laws. He did say he personally owns guns but said the gun control laws should change relating to the “militarization level” of weapons that are currently permitted under those laws.

He said in the past it was always a case of shooting incidents happening somewhere else, with people believing it could never happen to them. However, with 22,000 people attending the concert, this aspect is changing with so many more people knowing someone who was at the event when the shooting incident occurred. Norris said he wonders if that might inject more energy into the gun control debate.

Speaking of how the gun control laws were not changed after the Sandy Hook school shooting massacre – where 20 children were killed – he said some people believe things aren’t likely to change now. However, Norris said with that being a school, involving maybe 400 to 500 related people it makes it different.

He wonders just how many friends or relatives of the 22,000 people at the country music concert received similar text messages. Norris said the scope of the incident, multiplied by people’s friends and relatives, could lead to possibly hundreds of thousands of people affected by the incident.

One week anniversary of Vegas mass shooting

It was a week ago today that Stephen Paddock, 64, shot and killed 58 concertgoers and wounded over 500 more while shooting several automatic weapons from his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay down onto the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival on Strip in Las Vegas before taking his own life.

According to a report by ABC News, some law enforcement officials believe Paddock was suffering from an undiagnosed and severe mental illness when he launched his shooting spree.

After interviewing hundreds of people following the shooting, Paddock has been described as being anti-social and had difficulty interacting with others, traits which were reportedly common with other mass shooters in the past.