Jesse Hughes, the lead singer of Eagles of Death Metal, the band performing on the stage in the Bataclan theatre in Paris where 90 spectators were killed in November’s attacks, has said more people would have survived if everyone had access to guns.
Ahead of the band’s return to Paris tonight, the frontman made his controversial statement, saying that until “No-one has guns, then everyone should have them.”
The American, a member of the NRA and a supporter of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, has long been a supporter of the free access to guns. Speaking to French television, Hughes said his mind has not changed since the night Islamic fundamentalist terrorists took over the theatre and massacred 89 people before taking their own lives with suicide vests.
"Did French gun control stop a single f****** person from dying at the Bataclan? And if anyone can answer yes, I'd like to hear it, because I don't think so,” Hughes said.
"The only thing that stopped it was some of the bravest men I have ever seen charging head-first into the face of death with their guns.
"I know people will disagree, but it seems like God made men and women, and that night guns made them equal," the singer, who has previously admitted to always being armed when in the US, added.
Eagles of Death Metal, who previously joined U2 on stage in Paris in the aftermath of the attacks that left a total of 130 innocent people dead, will play a special memorial gig for the survivors of their November show.
Held in the Olympia theatre, the area is in complete police lockdown, with 30 volunteer counsellors and psychologists available on site to support any of the Bataclan survivors, many of whom have turned down the invitation to attend the show.
"I understand what the people who cannot come are feeling,” Hughes told the AFP. “I know in my heart the right thing to do is the hardest thing to do. And the thing that is going to achieve the exponential amount of healing is the thing that is hardest."
