The French government criticized President Donald Trump on Saturday for saying that civilians with guns would have stopped the terrorists of the 2015 attacks in Paris.
France 24 reported that Trump’s comments came during a speech he gave Friday at the National Rifle Association (NRA)’s annual conference in Dallas in which he said, “it would have been a whole different story if civilians around the attack had been armed.”
French foreign ministry spokeswoman Agnes von der Muhll was the one that criticized the comments in a statement published Saturday,
“France expresses its firm disapproval of the comments by President Trump about the attacks of November 13, 2015, in Paris and asks for respect of the memory of the victims.”
“They were brutally killed by a small group of terrorists that had guns,” Trump told the crowd of NRA gun supporters. “They took their time and gunned them down one by one.”
According to The Hill, Trump then formed a gun with his fingers and demonstrated a series of “booms” to represent the attack.
“But if one employee or just one patron had a gun or if one person in this room had been there with a gun aimed at the opposite direction, the terrorists would have fled or been shot,” Trump said.
On Nov. 13, 2015, simultaneous attacks from Islamist extremists aimed at a concert hall, stadium, restaurants and bars, killed 130 people and injured hundreds more.
France 24 also reported that other French officials spoke against Trump’s comments, including former French President François Hollande.
“The shameful comments and obscene antics of Donald Trump say a lot about what he thinks about France and her values,” Hollande said in a statement in French.
“The friendship between our peoples will not be stained by this disrespect and outrageousness. All my thoughts are for the victims of the November 13 attacks.”
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