Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Tuesday that if there had been an armed civilian who knew had to handle a gun on the scene at last week’s deadly shooting at a community college in Oregon, there could have been a different outcome.
Mr. Trump described himself as “a very big Second Amendment person.”
“If you had somebody in that room or a couple of people in that room who were on the side of good, not evil, and they had guns, you would have stopped [the] kind of damage that took place, and the cops did a great job,” Mr. Trump said. “The police did a fantastic job [because] they got there so quickly — amazing.”
The gunman shot and killed nine people at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, last week. He then killed himself during a shootout with police.
“But you still had lives lost and people badly, badly, really badly hurt, but the police did a fantastic job,” Mr. Trump said. “But if people would have been in that room, and if they would have had a gun … if they knew how to use it, you would have had a whole different outcome.”
“Most of the gun holders that do it legally, most of the gun holders really know how to use ’em,” he said. “But if somebody were in that room that had, you know, experience with a gun, they would have been able to fight back. They would have shot him maybe before he hurt and killed so many people.”
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• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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