CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) – Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said Friday that a ban on carrying guns in military recruiting offices should be lifted.
He made the comments Friday during a town hall-style event in Carson City, Nevada, a day after a gunman killed four Marines and wounded a sailor and another Marine at a pair of military facilities in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His statement drew enthusiastic applause from the crowd.
“It seems to me that if you have military bases or recruiting offices, these are symbols of American might, they’re targets,” Bush told reporters after the event. “This is how you garner attention. You go to places where there’s vulnerability, and it’s a very powerful symbolic attack on our country.”
Bush, who called for a moment of silence for the victims at the beginning of the event, said the attacks should also prompt the U.S. to heighten national security and “deal with the rest of the world in a more aggressive way.”
He noted that Congress would need to act for the gun ban at recruitment centers to be repealed.