A top National Rifle Association staffer disputed Donald Trump’s claims that arming the club-goers in Orlando would have prevented more killings.
“No one thinks that people should go into a nightclub drinking and carrying firearms,” NRA lobbyist Chris Cox said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “That defies commonsense. It also defies the law. It’s not what we’re talking about here.”
Trump said Friday at a rally that armed club-goers shooting Omar Mateen “would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight.”
“If we had people, where the bullets were going in the opposite direction, right smack between the eyes of this maniac,” Trump said, gesturing between his eyes. “And this son of a b—- comes out and starts shooting and one of the people in that room happened to have (a gun) and goes boom. You know what, that would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight, folks.”
The latest split comes as Trump has requested a meeting with NRA leaders to discuss banning gun sales to people on the federal terror watch list and no-fly list.
Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA, said Sunday that banning sales to those on the watch list would not have had any effect in Orlando because Omar Mateen had already been removed from the list.
“NRA didn’t take the guy’s name off the list. The federal government did, FBI did, largely because of these some politically correct policies that I think I have been talking about earlier,” LaPierre said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
The NRA’s push comes as senators prepare to vote on a series of measures which would limit sales to suspected terrorists. Opponents of the measures argue that federal watch lists are wrought with errors and could deprive citizens of their constitutional right to bear arms.
“The problem is, you have got indications on this list of people who might be involved in terrorism,” Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” “And we need to keep a list of that, need to do the best we can to monitor those people, so that they don’t become an active terrorist person. But a lot of people may be wrongly on the list. In fact, I’m sure there are a lot of people on that list that shouldn’t be on it.”