Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump thinks France’s tough gun control laws were in part to blame for the high death toll in Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris. “When you look at Paris, you know, the toughest gun laws in the world, nobody had guns except for the bad guys, nobody,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Beaumont, Texas, on Saturday. “Nobody had guns, and they were just shooting them one by one.”
The real estate mogul says it wouldn’t have been the same if more people had been packing heat when the shooting started. “You can say what you want, but if they had guns—if our people had guns, if they were allowed to carry—it would have been a much, much different situation,” Trump said. “I hear it all the time, you know. You look at certain cities that have the highest violence, the highest problem with guns and shootings and killings.”
Trump’s message isn’t new. After the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in January, Trump wrote on Twitter: “Isn’t it interesting that the tragedy in Paris took place in one of the toughest gun control countries in the world?”
Trump didn’t just take aim at gun-control laws. He also used the opportunity to characterize the White House’s plan to take in Syrian refugees as “insance.”
“Our president wants to take in 250,000 from Syria. I mean, think of it, 250,000 people, and we all have heart, and we all want people taken care of and all that, but the problems our country has to take in 250,000 people—some of whom are going to have problems, big problems—is just insane,” he said as the crowd cheered.
