US President Donald Trump took aim at two of America's closest allies in a speech at the NRA convention, saying strict gun laws failed to prevent the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris and highlighting a purported increase in knife violence in London.
The comments provoked anger in both France and Britain.
France was especially incensed after Trump, while speaking at the gun rights convention in Dallas on Friday, pointed his hand as if it were a gun while describing how each of the victims in Paris was fatally shot.
"They took their time and gunned them down one by one boom, come over here, boom, come over here, boom," he said.
The French foreign ministry issued a statement Saturday after Trump's comments.
"France expresses its firm disapproval of President Trump's remarks and calls for the respect of the memory of the victims," it said.
Francois Hollande, who was the French President during the 2015 attacks, tweeted Saturday:
"Donald Trump's shameful remarks and obscene histrionics say a lot about what he thinks of France and its values. The friendship between our two peoples will not be tainted by disrespect and excessiveness. All my thoughts go to the victims of November 13."
Trump went on to say things might have been different had Parisians in the cafes under attack had been armed.
"If one employee or just one patron had a gun, or if one person in this room had been there with a gun, aimed at the opposite direction, the terrorists would have fled or been shot. And it would have been a whole different story," Trump said.
The Élysée palace responded to that comment by saying, "The free flow of arms within society does not constitute a shield against terrorist attacks. It can instead facilitate the planning of this type of attack."
And the French ambassador to the United States, Gérard Araud, tweeted: "The statistics of the people killed by guns don't convince France to change its guns laws."
