Arch-conservative televangelist Pat Robertson appears to have had a change of heart about gun control after last week’s mass shooting at a Florida high school left 17 people dead.
“I’ve got no opposition whatsoever to shooting, but for heaven’s sakes, I don’t think that the general population needs to have automatic weapons,” Robertson said on “The 700 Club” on Tuesday.
“Amen,” an off-camera voice answered.
Robertson, who suffered a stroke earlier this month, asked for a ban on “bump stocks,” which allow semiautomatic weapons to fire as rapidly as machine guns. Weapons with bump stocks were used last year by Stephen Paddock during the Las Vegas shooting, which left 58 people dead and hundreds injured.
Robertson also called for more thorough background checks, including a medical check.
“If somebody is seeing a psychiatrist, is on medication, he or she needs to be prohibited from being turned loose on the general population,” he said. “It’s just got to be, y’know, sensible.”
A gun owner and a hunter, Robertson hasn’t exactly been a voice of moderation in the gun control debate. In 2014, he encouraged churches to arm worshippers.
“Blessed are the fully armed,” he said then.
Last year, Robertson linked the mass shooting at a Texas church to antidepressants and urged people not to use the attack to push for gun control.
“I hope and pray they don’t politicize this thing and start talking about gun control and all that because it won’t be necessary,” he said at the time, according to Media Matters.
Now, however, the 87-year-old seems to have altered his stance.
“I think we can ban those things without too much trouble,” Robertson said on Tuesday, referring to automatic weapons. “We can stop that.”
The AR-15-style rifle used in the Florida school shooting, as well as several other mass killings, is a semiautomatic. Since it is not an automatic weapon, it would not be affected by the ban Robertson suggested.
See his full discussion in the clip below.
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