Trump now claims he never suggested arming club-goers

Still numb from the latest mass shooting, in Orlando, it’s easy to imagine that guns have always divided us this way. The proposals have been roundly criticized by many Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan.

And, after the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, Trump tweeted, “President Obama spoke for me and every American in his remarks in #Newtown Connecticut”.

“If we had people with the bullets going in the opposite direction – right smack between the eyes of this maniac”, he said. You want to buy any gun at any time, with no restrictions.

Repeat: Three armed policemen couldn’t stop a mass-murderer with an assault gun. Our friends wouldn’t talk to us anymore if it weren’t for our shotgun collections. Opponents of the measures argue that federal watch lists are wrought with errors and could deprive citizens of their constitutional right to bear arms. So I understand that. What they said and I understand that also, the second amendment, depriving them of those rights.

“That’s why I’ll be voting to advance both options before us today in order to provide an opportunity to come to a bipartisan compromise”.

Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, has brought forward a compromise that would block gun purchases by some suspected terrorists, and it has support from at least four Democrats.

Many point to a single date as crucial in the societal shift: May 21, 1977, when a contingent of National Rifle Association members staged a revolt that remade the group’s leadership, scuttled plans for a retreat from politics and sealed a rightward, hard-line shift.

“When I said that if, within the Orlando club, you had some people with guns, I was obviously talking about additional guards or employees”, Trump tweeted Monday morning, seeking to clarify and qualify his earlier comments.

“Eventually this problem will get addressed again one of two ways: We find a breakthrough, which I will seek, or there will be another terrorist attack which will bring us right back to this issue”.

The attorney general also would have the authority to immediately take the prospective gun purchaser into custody if a judge determines there is probable cause that the individual is involved in terrorism. But a lot of people may be wrongly on the list.

What’s so bad about having to register certain kinds of weapons, going through background checks or setting up a red flag if on a watch list? We keep our families safe with a fully loaded assault rifle underneath our pillows at all times.

“Gun and magazine bans are a total failure”, he said. “That is a national crisis”. That’s – that defies common sense.

You gun owners are the most selfish people on earth.

Laws about carrying a gun while intoxicated vary by state.

“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”.