Trump: It would’ve been ‘beautiful’ for Fla. clubgoer to kill shooter
Donald Trump argued again that the mass shooting in Orlando, Fla., could have been less deadly had people in the gay nightclub been able to shoot back.
{mosads}At a rally in The Woodlands, Texas, Friday night, Trump theatrically said he wished the shooter, Omar Mateen, would have been taken down by an armed Pulse clubgoer.
“If we had people with the bullets going in the opposite direction — right smack between the eyes of this maniac,” Trump said, pointing in a gun gesture to his forehead. “If some of those wonderful people had guns strapped right here, right to their waist or right to their ankle, and this son of a bitch comes out and starts shooting, and one of the people in that room happened to have it and goes boom, boom, you know what? That would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight, folks, that would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight.”
Trump made a similar argument following terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels.
In the wake of the Orlando shooting, which killed 49, Trump has repeated his push to block Muslim immigration and suggested surveilling mosques.
Trump, who has the endorsement of the National Rifle Association, has said he would end gun-free zones. But he recently said he would work with the group to prevent suspected terrorists from buying guns.
At his Friday speech, Trump promised to protect the Second Amendment and bashed President Obama and Hillary Clinton for pushing gun control after the weekend shooting.
“President Obama is trying to make terrorism into guns, and it’s not guns, folks,” he said.
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