Is NRA-backed Donald Trump going anti-gun? Only for “bad people.”
Trump said Monday that he wants to take guns “away from criminals,” and continued to praise the controversial stop-and-frisk policy during the first presidential debate, at Hofstra University.
“We have gangs roaming the street and in many cases they’re illegally here, illegal immigrants, and they have guns and they shoot people,” he told moderator Lester Holt of “NBC News.” “And we have to be strong and we have to be vigilant. Right now our police are afraid to do anything.”
He added: “We have to bring back law and order. Now whether or not in a place like Chicago you do stop-and-frisk, which worked very well, Mayor Giuliani is here, it worked very well in New York. It brought the crime rate very down. But you take the guns away from criminals who shouldn’t be having it.”
Stop-and-frisk is a type of aggressive policing that allows — some say encourages — officers to detain a person on virtually any type of vague suspicion, search that individual without a warrant and arrest the person if any kind of illegal substance or weapon is found. Critics of the program questioned its constitutionality. They also pointed to the fact, documented in several studies, that the policy falls heaviest on black and Latino men.
Holt said to Trump: “Stop and frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York because it largely singled out black and Hispanic men.”
“No, you’re wrong,” Trump responded. “It went before a judge who was a very against-police judge. It was taken away from her and our mayor, our new mayor, refused to go forward with the case. It would have won an appeal.”
“The argument is that it’s a form racial profiling,” Holt said.
“The argument is that we have to take the guns away from these people that have them and that are bad people that shouldn’t have them. These are felons, these are people that are bad people,” Trump said.
