On Tuesday, Eagles of Death Metal will return to Paris to play their first show in the city since last November’s terrorist attacks halted the band’s show at Le Bataclan, where 89 people were killed. Before the concert, front man Jesse Hughes spoke with French TV station iTélé about how he’s been coping since the attacks. Unsurprisingly, emotions are still high, with Hughes explaining that he continues to experience waking nightmares about that night. But Hughes — a longtime pro-gun-rights activist, NRA member, and Donald Trump supporter — also used the interview to touch on what he thinks France could’ve done differently, suggesting that the country’s gun-control laws were ineffective in preventing the attacks. “Did your French gun control stop a single fucking person from dying at the Bataclan?” he questioned the interviewer. “I think the only thing that stopped it was some of the bravest men that I’ve ever seen in my life charging headfirst into the face of death with their firearms.”
Hughes went on to call for universal gun ownership, explaining that being armed would’ve saved more lives (despite data proving otherwise). “I know people will disagree with me, but it just seems like God made men and women, and that night guns made them equal. And I hate it that it’s that way. I think the only way my mind has been changed is that maybe that until nobody has guns, everybody has to have them. Because I don’t ever want to see anything like this ever happen again, and I want everyone to have the best chance to live.”