Trump to NRA Convention: Fewer Would Have Died in Paris if Patrons Could Shoot Back

While speaking to the NRA convention on May 4, President Trump referenced the November 13, 2015, Paris attack and noted that fewer innocents would have died if patrons could have shot back.

BBC News reported that 130 were killed via “coordinated” shooting and bombings in Paris. This includes 89 who were shot to death in the Bataclan theater alone.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Trump referenced the attack as proof that gun control does not control bad people. He said, “Paris, France, has the toughest gun laws in the world. Nobody has guns in Paris.” He talked of how the gun-free status of patrons allowed the killers to slowly and deliberately kill at will. Trump said, “They took their time and gunned them down one by one.”

Then Trump leveled the clincher: “But if one employee, or just one patron had a gun, or if one person in this room had been there with a gun, the terrorists would have fled or been shot.”

On November 22, 2015, Breitbart News reported that Trump told George Stephanopoulos that concealed carry could have reduced the carnage that occurred in Paris.

He said, “You know George, I am a really big proponent of the Second Amendment. I’ll give you an example–if in Paris some of those people had guns, you wouldn’t have had the horror show that you had where [none of the innocents] had guns.”

Stephanopoulos tried to push Trump toward gun control but Trump countered, “If those people in Paris had guns in that room, there would have been a shootout and very few people would have been hurt in comparison to the number that were hurt.” He added, “I’ll tell you who would’ve been hurt–the bad guys.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.