President Donald Trump has found an explanation as to why assault weapons that are often used in mass shootings should not be banned — people need them to entertain themselves.
On Tuesday, the former reality TV star, who found great success as a politician, sat down for an interview with Piers Morgan.
Trump, his entire family, and a very large entourage were in England where they met the queen and almost all the members of the royal family during multiple events for the D-Day 75th anniversary.
Mr. Trump sat down with the British anchor, where he tackled various topics, including gun violence in the United States.
Trump, who believes nothing can be done to prevent the almost 40,000 annual gun deaths in the US, said this when Mr. Morgan asked him about removing AR-15 assault weapons from circulation: “But Piers, in London you have these stabbings all over, I read this article where everyone is being stabbed. Well, they said that your hospital is a sea of blood all over the floors. It’s a big sea of blood, and they don’t have any guns.”
Morgan reminded POTUS that there have been over 150 mass shooting in America in 2019 and added: “We’ve had about 50 odd-murders with knives this year in London.”
Morgan later asked Trump: “What can you do as the president to change the mindset about gun violence?”
Trump hit back with: “Just talk about it, you have to just talk about it, at the Paris attacks, if one or two or three of those people had a gun, it would have never happened.”
Morgan, a strong advocate for gun control, responded by: “I don’t understand, never have understood why anyone in America needs a semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifle at home. Why do they need them?”
Trump gave the following reason: “Well, a lot of them used them for entertainment, they do.”
Morgan, who seemed surprised by the entertainment comment, asked: “Are guns entertainment?”
Trump explained: “For some people, it’s entertainment, yes, and they go out, and they shoot, and they go to ranges, and they have a tremendous amount of fun.”
Morgan spoke about Stephen Paddock, the American mass murderer behind the 2017 Las Vegas shooting that left 58 dead and 851 injured.
When Morgan told Trump that Paddock bought 52 guns in one year, he responded by: “And he was a sick guy, and if it weren’t guns, he would have made bombs, or he would have done something else. He was actually a pretty smart guy, and he was supposedly a successful gambler, there’s almost no such thing as a successful gambler. And he went out and what he did was incredible.”
Trump, who is still favored to win reelection in 2020, cannot afford to go against his base, big proponents of the Second Amendment.
