A gun store in Aurora, Colo., in 2013 (Ed Andrieski/AP)

The first time Benjamin Bishop walked into Lock N Load and tried to buy a gun, employees at the Florida gun store turned him away — and rightly so.

Bishop had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and claimed he was attacked by assailants — who existed only in his imagination, court records say. He abused bath salts, which intensified the hallucinations, and he punched holes in walls with a hammer and claimed he was Osama bin Laden, the documents say. After his mother had him involuntarily committed, he tried to strangle her.

State and federal laws were designed to keep guns out of the hands of people like Bishop, but he wanted one anyway.

So the second time he went to Lock N Load in Oldsmar, Fla., he brought a neighborhood acquaintance. As Bishop stood nearby, the 18-year-old acquaintance bought a 12-gauge shotgun for $279 in cash, court documents say.

The transaction was a straw purchase, in which someone buys a gun for a person who is legally prohibited from possessing one. Straw purchases are illegal for both the buyer and the seller, though the Tampa Bay Times reported that the teen who bought the shotgun later cooperated with authorities and wasn’t charged with a crime.

Outside the store, the neighbor turned the 12-gauge over to Bishop, who said he wanted to use it to protect himself from gang members.

Benjamin Bishop in 2014. (Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office)

But Bishop used the weapon on his mother instead: In 2012, he shot Imari Shibata and her boyfriend as they slept in their home in Pinellas County. She’d told him that he needed to get a job and that he had to take his schizophrenia medication. Bishop was furious.

“I was, like, in a rage,” he later told the Tampa Bay Times. “I was throwing doors down and stuff. I was cussing out my mom’s boyfriend. I was mad at my mom because she was forcing me on medication. She said either that or I was going to get kicked out of the house.”

He fired eight rounds at the couple, then called 911 to confess. Bishop’s mom and her boyfriend, Kelley Allen, were found dead at the scene.

[‘My 4-year-old gets jacked up to target shoot,’ mom brags hours before he shoots her]

Bishop, now in his early 20s, is serving two consecutive life sentences in prison. With the gunman off the streets, the families of the victims and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence focused their attention on Lock N Load, the store where Bishop got his gun.

A lawsuit filed in 2014 in a Florida circuit court by the families and the Brady Center claimed that the store’s owner, Gerald Tanso, didn’t do enough to keep a dangerous weapon out of the hands of a mentally ill man with a criminal record.

The parties settled. Most of the details of the settlement are confidential, but one part was made public: Tanso agreed to sell his gun store and never sell a firearm again.

Tanso has never been charged with a crime in Bishop’s case, nor were any of Lock N Load’s employees.

But if anyone “was personally and acutely aware of the risk associated with supplying firearms to mentally unstable individuals,” the lawsuit says, it should have been Tanso.

In 2011, his store sold a .38-caliber pistol to Julie Schenecker, who cleared all the appropriate checks, then used the gun to kill her two children. She’s serving two concurrent life sentences in prison.

Tanso initially called the legal action a “bogus lawsuit” filed by people who “are looking for money,” according to the Tampa Bay Times.

But on Friday, as part of a settlement, he released a statement via the Brady Center that encouraged gun owners to be cautious about whom they sell to.

“I have sold my gun shop and will no longer engage in the business of selling firearms,” Tanso said in the statement. “Our Second Amendment protects the rights of law abiding citizens and we must protect those rights. At the same time, we must exercise great caution and due diligence with great responsibility in preventing firearms from getting in the wrong hands of people who seek to harm us all.

“I support laws that protect our Second Amendment and the laws that protect our society from criminal elements who would abuse that right to the detriment of others. I encourage all gun dealers, including the new owner of my gun shop, to implement such measures.”

The statement listed several measures that go beyond what the law requires, including asking questions to ensure gun buyers aren’t purchasing them for prohibited people and maintaining and reviewing records of trace requests.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs told The Washington Post that other conditions of the settlement were confidential.

A man who answered the phone at a home phone number listed for Tanso said the former gun store owner was on vacation. Tanso did not return a message.

[Tombstone, site of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, dubs itself ‘America’s Second Amendment City’]

Jonathan Lowy, a Brady Center attorney involved in the case, said the organization has been going after the small percentage of gun stores that, he said, are responsible for 90 percent of the guns used in crimes.

“Most gun dealers are responsible business people who do what they can to prevent dangerous people from getting guns, but unfortunately there are some that don’t,” Lowy told The Post.

“For those gun dealers who just care about the bottom line and just care about the money they make from the next gun sale … lawsuits like this mean it’s no longer profitable. … We’re hoping we can change the calculus for those gun dealers.”

Last year, the Brady Center, a nonprofit that advocates for gun control and against gun violence, settled a $2.2 million wrongful-death lawsuit with a Missouri gun dealer who sold a gun to a mentally ill woman who then killed her father, according to the Kansas City Star.

Gun-control advocates had a number of other successes recently, according to The Post’s Amber Phillips: Twenty state legislatures rejected bills to allow guns in public without a permit. Seventeen states rejected bills to allow guns in schools. And Hawaii and Washington passed laws requiring that police be notified when a felon or domestic abuser tries to buy a gun and fails a background check.

But 60 bills supported by the National Rifle Association also became law this year, Phillips reported, and West Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas reduced gun-free zones in public buildings and parks.

Marion Hammer, a former president of the NRA who is now a lobbyist for the organization, said it doesn’t comment specifically on lawsuits it is not involved in, but she criticized the Brady Center’s tactics in general.

The Brady Center “is determined to find any way it can to destroy Second Amendment rights of citizens,” she said, adding: “There don’t appear to be individuals they target — it’s a cause. And if they get an individual gun shop owner in their sights, they’re going to spend whatever it takes unless the courts step in and put a stop to this malicious behavior.”

The Brady Center was founded as the National Council to Control Handguns in 1974. In 1981, it was renamed after James Brady, President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, who was permanently disabled during the 1981 assassination attempt on Reagan. Brady and his wife became strong voices for gun control, fighting for legislation that would require background checks to buy a gun from licensed firearms dealers. Brady died in 2014.

Despite the Brady Center’s victories in Florida and Kansas City, Erich Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, said courts have been throwing out similar cases for years.

“It’s wrong to punish the seller of a legal product for doing what’s constitutionally protected,” he said in an interview. “The bad guy in this case is the murderer. You don’t go after Chrysler because a car that was sold by a dealer is used to run somebody over.”

[Texas sheriff’s deputy and her husband charged with murder in chokehold at Denny’s]

But Lowy said the Brady Center goes after “bad-apple gun dealers” who skirt laws enacted to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.

Lock N Load still exists, but it has a new owner: Dominic Zingale, a federally licensed firearms dealer, who said in a written statement to the Tampa Bay Times that he “will continue to follow all of the applicable ATF, Florida, and local guns laws and procedures set forth by them to the letter.” He added that he has “no operational ties to the former owner nor have I worked with him when he was in the firearms business.”

“Honestly, I don’t think they should,” he told the Tampa Bay Times. “Guns are pretty fun to shoot.”

But the Times said Bishop also referenced the 2012 massacre in Newtown, Conn., in which Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

“I don’t know,” he said in 2013. “Just don’t give to somebody who’s going to end up killing a bunch of innocent 6-year-olds.”

Update No. 2: All four measures, as expected, failed. 

Update: A new poll from CNN shows 92 percent of Americans support expanded background checks and 85 percent support preventing those on terror watch lists from buying guns. As we’ll explain in the post below, though, none of the below proposals aimed at these things are likely to pass.

One filibuster, two gun control proposals, four party-line votes, zero compromises, lots of finger pointing.

That’s what we can expect Monday evening as the U.S. Senate votes on four different gun control amendments — two offered by Republicans, two by Democrats — a week after the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

We can confidently predict all four of these votes will go nowhere because the Senate took almost the exact same votes in December after the San Bernardino, Calif., attacks. Those votes largely fell — and failed — along party lines, with Republicans supporting looser versions of gun control proposals and Democrats supporting stricter versions.

We have no reason to expect different results Monday. Still, all is not lost: Both sides can and probably will use the results of Monday’s votes to rally their bases for November and try and apply pressure to the other side over the next few weeks and months.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on what Monday’s gun control votes mean and how to follow along.

The ground rules: The votes are expected to start at 5:30 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, and they’ll be proposed as amendments to a larger spending bill for the Commerce and Justice departments.

All four amendments will need 60 votes to be included in the package, which will also need to gain final approval. But given the partisan makeup of the Senate (54 Republican, 46 Democrat), and how the gun debate tends to fall neatly along partisan lines, we don’t expect any of the proposals to advance.

No. 1: Tighten up our background check system (Republican amendment)

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

What it proposes: Tries to open the lines of communication between the background check agency that Congress set up in the 1990s, the federal courts, the states and Congress to better carry out background checks. More specifically, defines what it means to be found “mentally incompetent” to buy a gun. Also requires the attorney general to conduct a study on “various sources and causes of mass shootings, including psychological factors, the impact of violent video games, and other factors.”

Sponsor: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chair of the Judiciary Committee

Amendment name to follow along on C-SPAN: S. Amdt 4751

How this fared in previous votes: Not well. A version of this that Grassley introduced in December failed to clear the 60-vote hurdle, 53-46.

Our prediction: It will fail this time too. Democrats don’t think it does enough to expand background checks because, well, it doesn’t expand background checks. It simply tries to improve the system we have now.

No. 2: Expand background checks (Democratic amendment)

What it does: Requires that a federal background check be conducted before every gun sale in the U.S., period. (The background check system Congress set up in the ’90s only requires background checks by federally licensed firearm dealers, which means you can usually skip it if you try to buy a gun online from a private dealer, at a gun show or from your friend.)

Sponsor: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the senator who talked on the floor for nearly 15 hours Wednesdayto demand these votes. (For what it’s worth, Senate Republicans say that even before Murphy seized the Senate floor, they expected Democrats to force votes on gun control amendments.)

Amendment name to follow along on C-SPAN: S. Amdt 4750

How this fared in previous votes: Not well, although it got some bipartisan support. It failed to get the 60 needed to move on, 48-50, although four Republicans voted for it: Mark Kirk of Illinois, Susan Collins of Maine, John McCain of Arizona and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

Our prediction: It will fail again. Most Republicans don’t support expanding background checks to gun shows and other purchases — or simply fear any additional gun laws are a slippery slope.

No. 3: Prevent suspected terrorists from buying guns (Republican version)

What it does: Right now, anyone on the FBI’s various terrorist watch lists — including the no-fly list that prevents you from getting on a plane — can legally buy a gun. Under this bill, if you’re on that list and try to buy a gun, you’d have to wait 72 hours. The idea is to give federal officials time to convince a judge there’s probable cause you have ties to terrorism while still protecting the 2nd Amendment rights of anyone who is mistakenly on a terrorist watch list — like the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) once was.

Sponsor: Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), Senate Republicans’ No. 2 leader

Amendment name to follow along on C-SPAN: S. Amdt 4749

How this fared in previous votes: Not well. (Sensing a trend here?) A similar version failed in December on a 55-44 vote. Democrats — and Attorney General Loretta Lynch — say it’s impossible to put together a case that a potential gun purchaser is a suspected terrorist in just three days, so they argue this bill would essentially allow anyone on the watch list to still be able to buy a gun.

Our prediction: It will fail again, for the reasons described above.

No. 4: Prevent suspected terrorists from buying guns (Democratic version)

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

What it does: Lets the attorney general ban anyone on FBI’s various terrorist watch lists from being able to buy guns. If you feel like you’re mistakenly on the list and you get denied a gun, you can challenge the FBI’s decision in court.

Sponsor: Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)

Amendment name to follow along on C-SPAN: S. Amdt. 4720

How this fared in previous votes: Not well, although it got some bipartisan support. A similar version of this failed in December, 45-54, with two senators voting on the other side: Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) voted with Republicans against this bill, and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) voted with Democrats for this bill.

Our prediction: It will fail again. Republicans think this bill takes away people’s constitutional rights for due process because it bans them from buying a gun first, then allows them to challenge it in court later. And even as some Republicans have expressed a willingness to look at the no-fly list proposal — up to and including Donald Trump — they are more likely to favor the GOP proposal over this one.

Some potential areas of compromise

Believe it or not, there are some opportunities — however small — for Congress to move forward on gun control legislation in the wake of Orlando.

For example, here’s one new idea that almost all of the four proposals above, have added: If a person who has been on one of the FBI’s terrorist watch lists at any point in the past five years tries to buy a gun, the federal government must immediately notify law enforcement about it. The Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, had been on and off the FBI’s watch list before he bought his weapons.

And there are negotiations going on behind the scenes to try to merge Democrats’ and Republicans’ terrorist watch list proposals. As The Washington Post’s Karoun Demirjian reports, Collins (R-Maine) is working on something that Democrats haven’t dismissed outright.

She wants to prevent people on two of the FBI’s terrorist watch lists (it’s unclear exactly many lists there are for perhaps obvious reasons) from buying guns: the no-fly list and the selectee list.

Both lists deal with a person’s rights at the airport. If you’re on the no-fly list, you can’t board an airplane. If you’re on the selectee list, you get extra security screening when you try to board a plane. Mateen was on the selectee list for a time. And under Collins’s proposal, if you are on these lists and are denied your right to buy a gun, you can challenge it, and if you win, the government has to pay your legal costs.

Again, her proposals are not exactly what Democrats want (they don’t like the idea of working with just these two terrorist watch lists) or what Republicans want (they don’t like the idea of banning a person from buying a gun first, then offering legal recourse later). But that’s the essence of a compromise, and right now it looks like the only one the Senate’s got.

Tellingly, Collins’s proposal isn’t up for a vote Monday, suggesting it might not yet have backing from Republican leaders.