16 Feb 2016 – Jesse Hughes, frontman of the Eagles of Death Metal band, has hit out at EU gun control laws as the anniversary of the Bataclan terrorist mass murders approaches.

Speaking to French TV station iTele in an emotional 19-minute interview, Hughes said: “Did your French gun control stop a single fucking person from dying at the Bataclan? And if anyone can answer yes, I’d like to hear it, because I don’t think so. I think the only thing that stopped it was some of the bravest men that I’ve ever seen in my life charging head-first into the face of death with their firearms.”

He added, in an English-language transcript prepared by left-wing British newspaper The Guardian: “I think the only way that my mind has been changed is that maybe that until nobody has guns everybody has to have them. Because I’ve never seen anyone that’s ever had one dead, and I want everyone to have access to them, and I saw people die that maybe could have lived, I don’t know.”

The Eagles of Death Metal are an ironically named band who don’t actually play death metal. They were playing in Paris’ Bataclan theatre on the night that Islamic terrorists burst in and murdered 89 people in cold blood, using illegally-acquired AK-47 rifles and grenades.

The EU proposed a ban on civilian ownership of semi-automatic rifles and pistols as a result of the murders, while freely admitting that a ban on legal ownership would have no effect upon terrorists or other criminals.