NRA: Orlando nightclub attack would have been avoided if everyone carried assault rifles

ORLANDO, Fla.—(TYDN)  The National Rifle Association said Saturday that gun control measures were responsible for the Orlando nightclub attack by a lone gunman who killed 49 partygoers, TheYellowDailyNews has learned.

The nation's biggest gun lobby said that gunman, Omar Mateen, would not have been able to kill 49 people June 12 and wound dozens of others at the Pulse club with an AR-15 assault rifle if everybody in the club was armed with an AR-15 or other weapon.

"Gun control advocates once again have blood on their hands," said DeWayne Pierrovitch, the NRA's chief executive officer, in an exclusive interview with TheYellowDailyNews. "There's absolutely no way Mateen would have walked into that club and started shooting everybody if everybody in that club also had an assault weapon. He just would not have done it, and everybody knows that."

TYDN file photo/Joe Loong

Pierrovitch's comments come as the nation mourns the Pulse club's victims amid a renewed debate about gun control. What's more, Second Amendment analysts suggested that the Supreme Court, backed by NRA lobbying, might now declare any form of gun restrictions illegal in the tragedy's wake.

"Jesus Christ, everyday there's another bloodbath in America and it's all because everybody isn't armed with an assault weapon—and that's because the Supreme Court hates America and is in President Barack Obama's pocket," Harvard University scholar Amid Dravovitch told TheYellowDailyNews in an exclusive interview. "It simply shocks the conscience to go out in public and not see everybody, except for the criminals, carrying assault weapons. When will this madness end?"

Family members of the victims expressed outrage, too. Speaking at a downtown vigil here, a mother of one of the dead Pulse victims said she felt responsible, in part, for the tragedy.

"My son was a good man and didn't deserve this," the mother, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, told TheYellowDailyNews in an exclusive interview. "I found a stockpile of assault rifles in his closet and made him throw them away."