Donald Trump says he didn't really mean Orlando nightclub victims should have carried guns

Donald Trump talks about guns and Orlando nightclub victims

(Image credit: Ralph Freso/Getty Images)

last updated 21 June 2016

Last week in Houston, and over the weekend in Phoenix, Donald Trump seemed to suggest that the slain revelers in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, should have been armed. "If some of those wonderful people had guns strapped right here — right to their waist or right to their ankle — and one of the people in that room happened to have it and goes 'boom, boom,' you know, that would have been a beautiful sight, folks," Trump said in Houston. Here's how he put it in Phoenix:

Coincidentally, the NRA's top officials had disagreed with Trump's perceived earlier meaning on the Sunday talk shows. "No one thinks that people should go into a nightclub drinking and carrying firearms," Chris Cox, the NRA's top lobbyist, said on CBS' Face the Nation. "That defies common sense. It also defies the law." Wayne LaPierre, the NRA executive vice president, agreed on ABC's This Week: "I don't think you should have firearms where people are drinking."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.

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