Eliza Collins

USA TODAY

Donald Trump said he owes his changed stance on the assault weapons ban to the nation's need for protection.

“I changed positions because we need protection in this country. We need protection. We have to have protection,” Trump said on CBS This Morning Monday. “And the bad guys have them, so if the bad guys have them, we need protection in this country.”

The presumptive GOP nominee recently flipped his position on the assault weapons ban. (“I don’t support it anymore,” he said in March.)

In Trump’s 2000 book, The America We Deserve, he said: "I generally oppose gun control, but I support the ban on assault weapons and I support a slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun."

Trump's comments come one day after a heavily armed assailant killed 49 people and injured dozens more in a gay nightclub in Orlando.The shooter pledged allegiance to the Islamic State before the shooting.

On CNN New Day Monday morning Trump said the tragedy would have been mitigated if people had their own guns with them at the club.

"If you had some guns in that club the night that this took place, if you had guns on the other side, you wouldn't have had the tragedy that you had. If people in that room had guns with the bullets flying in the opposite direction right at him right at his head, you wouldn't have had the same tragedy that you ended up having," Trump said. "Even if you had a number of people having them strapped to their ankle or strapped to their waist, where bullets could have flown in the other direction right at him, you wouldn't have had the same kind of a tragedy.”

Clinton, also on New Day Monday, struck the opposite tone on the ban.

"First of all, Florida doesn't regulate assault weapons or .50 caliber rifles or large-capacity ammunition magazines. It doesn't require a permit to purchase a gun. It doesn't require any registration, whatsoever. It doesn't require gun owners to be licensed. And it doesn't require a permit to carry a shotgun or a rifle. It doesn't even require a background check prior to the transfer of a firearm between, you know, non-federally licensed parties," Clinton said. "Now, you know, that's a lot of nots. And you know, I believe strongly that common sense gun safety reform across our country would make a difference."

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