Donald Trump: ‘Sometimes’ I carry a gun
Donald Trump says he sometimes carries a gun to protect himself.
“Sometimes,” Trump told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “I will tell you, I feel much better being armed.”
At a rally in Tennessee on Oct. 3, the Republican presidential frontrunner told the crowd he has a concealed-weapon permit.
“I have a license to carry in New York — can you believe that? Nobody knows that,” Trump said. “Somebody attacks me, they’re gonna be shocked.”
On Sunday, Trump said he obtained the license years ago because “I like to have myself protected.”
The GOP candidate has been courting supporters of the Second Amendment in the wake of the deadly shooting at a community college in Roseburg, Ore., earlier this month.
Authorities say the 26-year-old shooter, Christopher Sean Harper-Mercer, brought at least six guns and five ammunition magazines to the school, killing nine people and wounding seven others before killing himself.
“Had somebody in that room had a gun, the result would’ve been better,” Trump said Sunday. “I think that if you had the teacher, assuming they knew how to use the weapon, which hopefully they would, you would’ve been a lot better when this maniac walked into class, starting to shoot people.”
Trump speaks at a rally in Las Vegas last week. (Photo: Isaac Brekken/Getty Images)
A day after the massacre, the real estate mogul said such killings are always going to happen because mentally ill people will “slip through the cracks” regardless of the law.
“This isn’t a gun problem; this is a mental problem,” Trump told CNN. “It’s not a question of the laws; it’s really the people.”
“Guns, no guns — it doesn’t matter,” Trump said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” last week. “You have people that are mentally ill. And they’re gonna come through the cracks. And they’re going to do things that people will not even believe are possible.”
Trump has criticized former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s much mocked reaction to the shootings.
“He used the words ‘stuff happens,’ and I thought it was a very bad phrase to use,” Trump told the crowd in Tennessee. “I actually was watching that and thought, ‘Wow, how does he use that phrase?’”
But in an interview with ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos" a day later, Trump sounded awfully similar.
“No matter what you do, you will have problems,” Trump said. “And that’s the way the world goes.”
