Donald Trump Storms Tennessee to Push Second Amendment Protection Plan After Oregon Shooting by Michael Patrick Leahy3 Oct 2015Franklin, Tennessee
FRANKLIN, Tennessee — GOP frontrunner Donald Trump offered a ringing defense of gun rights and the Second Amendment to an enthusiastic standing-room-only crowd of 3,000 Tennesseans on Saturday. An overflowing audience of an additional 1,000 stood outside The Factory in Franklin, Tennessee in the drizzling rain as they listened to the rally on speakers.
It was a huge turnout for Trump, whose campaign team announced the event less than 72 hours earlier.
“I’m a very, very big 2nd Amendment person,” Trump told the crowd. “It’s very important to me.”
“We have an incredible policy,” Trump said, as he waived a copy of the Second Amendment position paper he released on September 18. “You know, they all wanted me to do policy.”
“Read it!” someone in the crowd shouted to Trump.
“I’ll start off. Should I start off, really?” Trump asked, to which the crowd responded with cheers.
“Protecting our Second Amendment rights will make America great again,” Trump began, reading the title of his policy paper to the receptive crowd. “The Second Amendment to our Constitution is clear.”
Then, in true Trump style, he ad-libbed.
“Now this is in light of what happened in Oregon. Now every time something happens like this… They don’t blame mental illness, that our mental health care is out of whack, and all the other problems,” he said.
“And by the way,” he continued, “it was a gun-free zone.”
“I will tell you, if you had a couple of the teachers or somebody with guns in that room you would have been a helluva lot better off,” Trump added. “We can say that with respect to a number of places where that happens. How about the military event that took place three or four months ago? Where you had these highly decorated soldiers in a military area… where they weren’t allowed to have their guns. And this whack job walks in and starts shooting them.”
“Why are we having gun-free zones in a military camp?” he asked.