For reasons as yet unknown, Donald Trump has a longstanding tendency to slip into impressions during speeches and off-the-cuff remarks. Past impersonations have included opponent (Marco Rubio), employee (Jeff Sessions), sworn enemy (windmills), and, of course, the media (memorably, a disabled reporter who wrote a story he didn’t like. So it wasn’t entirely surprising that he added another bit to his repertoire during a speech at a National Rifle Association convention on Friday, but it was slightly surprising that said bit involved . . . a terrorist attack that killed 130 people.

Speaking to the crowd in Indianapolis, Trump told the room of gun-lovers, “Paris, France, they say has the strongest gun laws in the world,” arguing that hundreds of people died and 368 were injured because of such regulations. “If there was one gun being carried by one person on the other side, it very well could have been a whole different result,” the president said, claiming that if even a “tiny percentage” of concert-goers had been armed, the attack “probably wouldn’t have happened because the cowards would have known there were people and they’re having guns.” He then proceeded to re-enact the attacks, telling the audience while pantomiming firing into a crowd, “They shot one person, then another person, then another person, then another person . . . the shooting went on for so long and there wasn’t a thing you could do about it. ‘Get over here [boom], get over here [boom].”

This isn’t the first time Trump has claimed the Bataclan tragedy could have turned out very differently had there been a “good guy” with a gun on hand. Last May, at another N.R.A. event, he told the crowd, “If just one employee or patron had a gun aimed at the opposite direction, the terrorist would have fled or been shot.” (Of course, if he actually cared about the people of France, he might not have spent the three-year anniversary of the attacks trashing their country.) His ideologically tinged fantasies extend to more local tragedies, too. After the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, he claimed, against all odds, that he would have charged into the school during the shooting. “I really believe I’d run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon,” he told governors meeting at the White House to discuss school safety.

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