Scott Olson for CBS News reports:

After a gunman opened fire in a Lafayette, Louisiana movie theater last week, killing two people and injuring nine others, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is pushing back against repeated calls to strengthen gun control legislation.

“These are sick people,” Trump said of the shooter, John Russell Houser, who was reported to be mentally ill. “This has nothing to do with guns. This has to do with the mentality of these people.”

“I’m a big Second Amendment person. You need protection,” the presidential hopeful added in a CNN interview Sunday. “This person from what I hear had a record of mental instability. If it’s proven and documented you have to be careful to not let them kill people. He had the kind of record where he should be in an institution. He’s a sick puppy.”

Trump referenced another recent gun massacre in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where four Marines were killed, to argue against increasing gun control measures.

Read the full story at CBS.