Trump Contradicts Previous Stance on Guns at Pulse Nightclub
Trump said Friday it would have been a "beautiful sight" if someone had a gun.
— -- Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump says he "obviously" meant that additional guards or employees should have been armed at the Orlando nightclub where a shooter killed 49 people June 12.
Trump's latest comment clashes with a number of his previous remarks about the shooting at Pulse nightclub. For example, Trump said on Friday night, "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."
Speaking on "The Howie Carr Show" on June 13, Trump said, "It's too bad some of the people killed over the weekend didn’t have guns attached to their hips, where bullets could have thrown in the opposite direction. Had people been able to fire back, it would have been a much different outcome."
Trump's latest comment on the topic comes after the NRA's top lobbyist told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that he would discourage people from carrying a concealed weapon while drinking at a club.
"No one thinks that people should go into a nightclub drinking and carrying firearms," said Chris Cox, the executive director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action. "That defies common sense. It also defies the law."
During the course of his campaign, Trump has often called for people to carry weapons in order to stop an active shooter situation.
"If in that club you had some people, not a lot of people ... but if you had somebody with a gun strapped onto their hip, somebody with a gun strapped onto their ankle and you had bullets going in the opposite direction, right at this animal who did this, you would have had a very, very different result," Trump said Saturday at the Arizona State Fairgrounds.
"And by the way, if you had some guns in that club the night that this took place, if you had guns on the other side, you wouldn't have had the tragedy that you had," he told CNN.