Trump Says People Need Assault Weapons Used in Mass Shootings for ‘Entertainment’

President Donald Trump said that people in the United States need the AR-15 assault weapons that are popular with mass shooters for “entertainment,” and compared the almost 40,000 annual gun deaths in the U.S. with stabbing deaths in the U.K that number in the hundreds each year.

British journalist Piers Morgan has long been an advocate of more gun control in the U.S. and used part of his new interview with Trump to press that point.

Asked if he’d like to ban silencers like the one used in the Virginia Beach mass shooting last week, Trump said he’d “like to think about it, I mean nobody’s talked about silencers very much,” and added that “It’s crazy what’s going on with, and not only in our country, and not only in our country…”

“But America has this particular issue with gun violence,” Morgan said, pointing out that there have been “150 mass shootings in America this year alone. In Britain, we have 35 gun deaths a year. In America today there will be 85, tomorrow 85.”

“But Piers, in London you have stabbings all over, I read an article where everyone is being a stabbed,” Trump said.

“We’ve had 50 odd-murders with knives this year in London,” Morgan said.

“Well, they said your hospital is a sea of blood all over the floors. It’s a sea of blood and they don’t have the guns,” Trump said. Annual stabbing deaths in England number fewer than 300.

“What can you do as the president to change the mindset about gun violence?” Morgan asked.

“Just talk about it, you have to talk about it,” Trump said, then went on a lengthy digression about the 2015 Paris attacks, insisting that “if one or two or three of those people had a gun, it would have never happened.”

“Here’s my problem with that argument,” Morgan said. “More people were shot dead in America that week than have died from guns and Paris since the second world war. I mean, the stats are so against that argument, aren’t they?”

“What are you going to do, you’re going to take the guns away from hunters? You have hunters, and they want guns.” Trump said.

“I think it can have special licenses for hunters,” Morgan said, and added that while he also supports gun ownership for home defense, “I don’t understand, never have understood, why anyone in America needs a semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifle at home. Why do they need them?”

“Well, a lot of them used them for entertainment, they do,” Trump said. “I mean it’s really…”

“Are guns entertainment?” Morgan interrupted.

“For some people, it’s entertainment, they go out and they shoot and they go to ranges and they have a tremendous amount of fun,” Trump said.

“Sport shooting and specific hunting with licenses, I get that, what I don’t get is the need, this guy in Vegas had 13 AR-15 assault rifles. He bought $52 guns in one year.” Morgan said.

“And he was a sick guy, and if it wasn’t guns, he would have done bombs or he would have done something else,” Trump said. “He was actually a pretty smart guy, he was supposedly a good successful gambler, there’s almost no such thing as a successful gambler. And we went out and what he did was incredible.”

Watch the clip above, via Good Morning Britain.