Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump locked, loaded and fired away at Hillary Clinton on Friday at the National Rifle Association’s annual gathering in Louisville, Ky.
Trump, who seemed surprised to receive the major gun lobby’s endorsement minutes before he took the stage, spent most of his speech blasting the Democratic front-runner’s aggressive push for gun control and accusing her of wanting to leave Americans “defenseless.”
“Hillary wants to disarm vulnerable Americans in high-crime neighborhoods. Whether it’s a young, single mom in Florida or a grandmother in Ohio, Hillary wants them to be defenseless,” the billionaire told thousands of gun owners in the audience.
He added, “[She] wants to take away any chance they have at survival. And that’s why we’re going to call her ‘heartless Hillary.'”
Despite advocating for a federal ban on assault weapons in his 2000 best-seller, The America We Deserve, Trump has strived to reinvent himself as a steadfast Second Amendment supporter by promising to eliminate gun-free zones — “We’re getting rid of gun free-zones, OK?” he told the audience on Friday — and proposing such measures as nationalizing concealed carry permits.
Meanwhile, Clinton wants to “abolish the Second Amendment,” Trump claimed on Friday.
“Americans use guns to defend themselves against crime more than a million times a year and they want to take them away,” he said. “Heartless hypocrites like the Clintons want to take this and they want to get rid of guns and yet they have body guards who have guns.”
Trump told the audience that in addition to urging the former secretary of state to release her own list of potential Supreme Court nominees, he wants to “call them (Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton) and let their body guards [know] to immediately disarm.”
“Then let’s see how they feel walking around,” he said with a smirk.
Friday marked the first time Trump’s gone after Clinton with such force in a major speech of his. The billionaire has attacked her in media appearances and frequently took jabs during GOP primary debates, but rarely at the level he displayed on Friday at the NRA gathering.
“She’s not equipped to be president in so many different ways,” he told the crowd.
