When President Donald Trump spoke to the NRA convention on Friday, he suggested fewer people could have died in Paris on November 13, 2015, if Parisians had been allowed to be armed for self-defense.
The Daily Mail reports that French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian responded by expressing “firm disapproval” of Trump’s suggestion that allowing people to be armed for self-defense would have made them safer.
The Los Angeles Times reported 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 attackers to methodically kill at will. He said, “They took their time and gunned them down one by one.”
Trump observed, “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.”
Despite the 130 killed in Paris that night, Le Drian said they will not “reconsider France’s choice on this issue.” He added, “‘Free circulation of weapons in society does not constitute a rampart against terrorist attacks, to the contrary, it can facilitate this type of attack.” In saying this, Le Drian ignored the fact that the attack occurred despite France’s strict gun controls.
Trump’s observation is simply that the attack was made worse because the victims were rendered defenseless by the myriad gun laws in France.
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.
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