This was the scene Monday outside Philadelphia's City Hall as gatherers hold a candlelight vigil for those killed and injured in the Orlando attacks. | M. Scott Mahaskey LGBT groups to Trump: No thanks

Donald Trump's speech casting himself as a defender of the LGBT community in the wake of Sunday's massacre at a gay nightclub in Florida did not go over well with the country's largest gay rights group. And other groups are even considering joining the push for new gun-control measures, rejecting Trump's call for Americans to take up arms and defend themselves.

"Our nation stands together in solidarity with the members of Orlando's LGBT community," the GOP's presumptive nominee said during Monday's speech in Manchester, New Hampshire. "Ask yourself, who is really the friend of women and the LGBT community, Donald Trump with his actions, or Hillary Clinton with her words?" he added later. "Clinton wants to allow Radical Islamic terrorists to pour into our country — they enslave women, and murder gays," Trump said. "I don’t want them in our country."


Trump is “no friend of the LGBTQ community,” Jay Brown, a spokesperson for Human Rights Campaign, said Monday. “Donald Trump has vowed to roll back marriage equality, pass Kim Davis-style discrimination and allow governors from coast to coast to pass laws like North Carolina’s HB2,” he said.

Brown added that the perpetrator of the shooting at Pulse Nightclub was an “an American citizen conditioned to hate and to believe that LGBTQ people deserved to be massacred.”

Trump, though he was critical of North Carolina's so-called bathroom law, has often taken positions at odds with those of LGBT groups. Following last summer’s Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, Trump attacked Chief Justice John Roberts for his position on Obergefell v. Hodges. “Once again the Bush appointed Supreme Court Justice John Roberts has let us down. Jeb pushed him hard! Remember!” he tweeted.

In Monday's speech, Trump also repeated his claim that Hillary Clinton wanted to "ban guns" and said he would be meeting with the NRA to brainstorm ways to help Americans arm themselves. "Her plan is to disarm law-abiding Americans, abolishing the 2nd Amendment, and leaving only the bad guys and terrorists with guns," he said.

But LGBT groups are moving in the other direction, and many are now considering joining efforts to push for new gun-control measures.

Jo Michael, legislative manager at Equality California, said Sunday’s events had moved the LGBT community, and Michael's organization would look more closely at supporting gun control legislation at the state and federal level.

“Equality California has been involved with legislation around hate crimes, making sure that legislation is implemented,” Michael said. “What is going to be different moving forward is being directly involved in supporting legislation is specifically about gun control.”

Taylor Maxwell of Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit funded by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg that advocates for gun safety, said the organization is already working with the major LGBT groups around the country.

“We’re taking part in — and in some places leading — vigils and advocacy actions across the country to mobilize communities to act to end gun violence,” she said.

Ladd Everitt, director of communications at the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, said they’ve received strong support from the LGBT community but as far as collaboration, “it’s too early to sketch out what that will look like.”

“It’s more about figuring out a way for the LGBT community to collaborate with any group that’s trying to prevent violence and these kinds of attacks,” Matt McTighe, executive director at Freedom for All Americans, told POLITICO on Monday. “Right now everyone is just trying to come to terms with everything.”

Authorities are still investigating the events, which left at least 49 people dead and 53 injured. The man authorities have named as the killer, 29-year-old Omar Mateen, was carrying a semiautomatic rifle and a pistol, and a third firearm was found in his vehicle.

Gay rights advocates said that the LGBT community is familiar with violence, but acknowledge there could be stronger support for gun control from their community.

Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, hopes that the tragedy will awaken the LGBT community.

“This is a moment that should be for all of a moment of electrifying clarity for something that has not been sufficiently acknowledged,” Minter said. “I think recognizing that gun control is so central to achieving basic equality in our country is a message that we haven’t put forth strongly enough.”

“I think that something our movement has learned over the years is to let the experts lead, so we will take our cues from the leaders of the gun control movement,” Mark Snyder from Equality Federation told POLITICO.