Paul Singer

USA TODAY

Donald Trump stepped back Monday morning from his controversial comments suggesting that the massacre in an Orlando gay nightclub might have not been as bad had patrons been armed.

At a rally in Houston on Friday, Trump said "If some of those wonderful people had guns strapped right here — right to their waist or right to their ankle — and one of the people in that room happened to have it and goes 'boom, boom,' you know, that would have been a beautiful sight, folks."

But NRA officials said Sunday that having armed patrons in bars with alcohol was not such a good idea.

"I don’t think you should have firearms where people are drinking," said NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre on CBS's Face the Nation.

Chris Cox, the NRA's top lobbyist, said on ABC's This Week, "No one thinks that people should go into a nightclub drinking and carrying firearms. That defies commonsense. It also defies the law."

On Monday morning, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee tweeted a kind of clarification, saying he meant all along armed guards, not armed patrons.

The club did have armed security the night of the shooting, according to FactCheck.org.

Orlando nightclub patrons shouldn't have been armed, NRA says