Trump says if Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims 'had protection inside, the results would have been far better'

President Trump speaks about the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting
(Image credit: CBS News/Screenshot)

Asked whether Saturday's deadly shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue would prompt him to rethink gun policy, President Trump suggested fewer people would have been killed had they been armed or guarded at worship.

"Well, again, this has little to do with it, if you take a look — if they had protection inside [the synagogue], the results would have been far better," he said. "This is a dispute that will always exist, I suspect, but if they had some kind of a protection inside the temple, maybe it could have been a very much different situation. They didn't."

Trump has previously argued teachers should be trained and armed so they can take on would-be school shooters.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Later Saturday, Trump offered different remarks. "This evil anti-Semitic attack is an attack on all of us; it is an assault on humanity," he said at a rally in Illinois. "The scourge of anti-Semitism cannot be ignored, cannot be tolerated, and it cannot be allowed to continue. ... It must be confronted and condemned everywhere it rears its very ugly head."

Watch a clip of Trump's "protection" comments below. Bonnie Kristian

See more

This is a breaking news story and has been updated throughout.

To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.