Bill Clinton said every American needs to be on high alert after Orlando. | Getty Bill Clinton: More guns wouldn't have prevented Orlando shooting

Having more gun-wielding Americans wouldn’t have prevented the massacre in Orlando, Florida, former President Bill Clinton said Tuesday.

Omar Mateen, a U.S. citizen born to Afghan parents, slaughtered 49 people and injured 53 more on Sunday inside an LGBT nightclub before he was shot dead after carrying out the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.


In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Clinton indicated that he would like to see intelligence officials and federal and local law enforcement be provided with more resources to identify so-called lone wolves and suggested that more guns are not the solution.

Clinton said there’s an indication that some people close to Mateen may have known that he was going to do “something,” though they may not have imagined he would fire shots in a nightclub and take hostages.

“You have to take it seriously. It’s also true in other areas,” Clinton said of such signs. “A lot of people miss clear signs of suicide, and this is something new — this sort of, you know, you can go down to your friendly store and get an AR-15 and wipe out a bunch of people. We need tighter security on that.”

Clinton echoed proposals that his wife, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, outlined in a speech Monday for stricter defenses and increased U.S. efforts around the world to defeat the Islamic State and other terrorist networks.

Every American needs to be on high alert, the former president said, and “can’t ignore someone who may be ranting and raving.” But he argued against speculation that had people inside the nightclub been armed, the carnage could have been reduced.

“Did you see how dark it was?” he asked. “I think it’s likely that more people would have been killed” had there been more guns on the scene.

Clinton signed a 10-year ban on assault weapons during his administration, “and no small number of members of Congress lost their jobs because they voted for that and what was then a comprehensive background check law,” he said.

He ticked through the law’s impact on improving gun safety and acknowledged that once it expired, there didn’t seem to be an uptick in crime for a while.

“But if you look at what happened with these big weapons at Sandy Hook and Aurora, Colorado, most recently in Orlando and San Bernardino, it’s pretty clear that if you’re firing a lot of weapons — a lot of ammunition — in a short amount of time with a weapon that’s designed only to kill, more people will die than if you’re stuck with a pistol,” he said. “If the guy had just had a pistol in that nightclub, I don’t think anybody believes he could possibly have killed 49 people.”

