NRA says Donald Trump's proposal on guns in bars 'defies common sense'
Mr Trump had spoken out in the aftermath of the Orlando shooting
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Your support makes all the difference.There are some things Donald Trump says that even the NRA does not agree with.
In the aftermath of the Orlando shooting that left 49 people dead and which injured another 40, the presumptive Republican nominee had suggested that if clubbers had been armed, they would have been able to prevent the slaughter, launched by gunman Omar Mateen.
“If some of those wonderful people had guns strapped right here, right to their waist or right to their ankle, and this son of a ***** comes out and starts shooting and one of the people in that room happened to have it and goes boom, boom,” Mr Trump said after the shooting at the Pulse nightclub.
“You know what, that would’ve been a beautiful, beautiful sight, folks.”
Mr Trump, who has received the endorsement of the National Rifle Association, also said he believed that people who were on a terrorist or no-fly watch-list, should not be able to buy a weapon. The NRA was not wholly supportive of this proposal.
But now, in another sign of potential friction between the gun lobbying group and the Republican nominee, the NRA has said it disagrees with Mr Trump’s proposal. What’s more, it believes that mixing alcohol with loaded weapons was only likely to end badly.
“I don’t think you should have firearms where people are drinking, but I’ll tell you this: Everybody, every American needs to start having a security plan,” Wayne LaPierre, the CEO of the NRA, told CBS.
Another senior official from the powerful lobbying group, went even further.
“No one thinks people should go into a nightclub drinking and carrying firearms,” Chris Cox he told ABC. “That defies common sense. It also defies the law.”
The shooting inside a gay nightclub in Orlando killed 49 people and injured dozens more. There was an armed guard, an Orlando Police officer, who exchanged gunfire with the shooter, but Mr Trump had implied that people inside the club should be free to arm themselves.
Laws about carrying a gun while intoxicated vary state by state. A review by the New York Times in 2010 found eight states banned loaded guns in any establishment that served alcohol.
About half of the remaining states allowed loaded guns in bars or certain parts of restaurants that served alcohol, and the other half did not have laws banning it or allowing it
Mr Trump had made similar comments after last year’s terror attack in Paris that left more than 100 people dead. He said the attack on the Bataclan nightclub would have ended very differently if people had been armed.
“When you look at Paris - you know the toughest gun laws in the world, Paris - nobody had guns but the bad guys. Nobody had guns. Nobody,” Mr Trump said at a rally.
“You can say what you want, but if they had guns, if our people had guns, if they were allowed to carry - it would’ve been a much, much different situation.”
Mr Trump’s comments were in sharp contrast to those made by President Barack Obama during his visit to Orlando on Thursday.
“The notion that the answer to this tragedy would be to make sure that more people in a nightclub are similarly armed to the killer defies common sense,” he said.
On Monday, Mr Trump sought on Twitter to walk back in his most recent comments.
He wrote: “When I said that if, within the Orlando club, you had some people with guns, I was obviously talking about additional guards or employees.”
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