A bloody mass shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs that killed five people should serve as a persuasive reason to allow gay people and women to carry guns, former U.S. Ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell said Monday on Newsmax.
In an interview on Newsmax's "John Bachman Now," Grenell, a former acting director of National Intelligence in the Trump administration, derided the near-automatic response he expects from anti-gun advocates.
"I see the left completely screaming about guns again," he said of the slaughter by gunman Anderson Lee Aldrich — whose violent past never triggered Colorado's "red flag" law that would have allowed authorities to seize the weapons and ammo from him.
But Grenell said the larger concern is that vulnerable targets to mass shooters — gay people and women — are not allowed to better protect themselves.
"I believe that women, gay people, people who are targets of crime should be allowed to carry guns," Grenell asserted.
"You should not take away their right to protect themselves. And when you start disarming women, when you start disarming gay people, you are making them an increased target."
According to Grenell — the first openly gay person to serve in a Cabinet position — "this is just a total problem of the left where they are making gay people and women greater targets."
Meanwhile, police in Colorado Springs are crediting one Club Q bar patron for helping contain the slaughter Saturday night by grabbing a handgun from the suspect, hitting him with it and pinning him down until police arrived.
"Had that individual not intervened this could have been exponentially more tragic," Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers told The Associated Press.
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Fran Beyer ✉
Fran Beyer is a writer with Newsmax and covers national politics.
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