US President Donald Trump says that new gun laws would have made "no difference" in preventing the massacre at a church service in the state of Texas that left 26 people dead.
Speaking at a news conference on Tuesday in South Korea as part of his Asia tour, the president said more gun restrictions might have led to more casualties.
“If [the neighbor] didn’t have a gun, instead of having 26 dead, you would have had hundreds more dead. So that's the way I feel about it. Not going to help,” Trump said.
At least 26 people died and 20 others were wounded Sunday when a gunman wearing a bulletproof vest opened fire at worshipers inside a church in Sutherland Springs, a small town near San Antonio.
“The city with the strongest gun laws in our nation is Chicago. And Chicago is a disaster. A total disaster,” he added.
Speaking a day earlier in Tokyo, Japan, Trump insisted the latest gun violence tragedy cannot be blamed on firearms and said mental health problems are the main culprit.
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The incident took place five weeks after the mass shooting in Las Vegas where 58 people were killed, the worst massacre in modern US history.
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Trump has been an outspoken ally to the gun lobby both as a candidate and president. In April, he told the National Rifle Association (NRA) that they had a "true friend and champion in the White House."
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 970,622 people in the US were killed or injured by a firearm from 2006 to 2014.
Gun violence is the third-leading cause of accidental death in the US, behind drug overdoses and automobile crashes.