Libertarian Party vice presidential nominee Bill Weld, a former federal prosecutor, said Donald Trump crossed a line Tuesday when he said gun-rights supporters could do something to stop Hillary Clinton from winning the White House.

“If this were a remark by a non-candidate, and she was in office, it would definitely be investigated as a threat against the president, and I will say so,” Mr. Weld said in a statement provided to The Washington Times.

Mr. Weld, was the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts and then headed the Justice Department’s criminal division in the Reagan administration. He later served two terms as governor in Massachusetts.

Mr. Trump sparked the controversy with his offhand comment about how to prevent Mrs. Clinton from making the next Supreme Court picks, who Mr. Trump said would eviscerate the Second Amendment’s protections.

“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Mr. Trump said, then added, “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”

Mr. Trump’s campaign said he was talking about them flexing their political power, but Republicans cringed and Democrats said it sounded like he was bordering on inciting violence.

Mrs. Clinton has had her own run-in with comments that seemed to refer inappropriately to violence. During the 2008 campaign, while defending her continued fight against then-candidate Barack Obama for the nomination, she pointedly mentioned that Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated at about that same point in the 1968 race.

And Mr. Obama in 2008, speaking at a fundraiser, urged supports: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”

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