The Trump campaign walked back a claim Monday that former President Donald Trump bought a Glock handgun during a campaign stop in South Carolina.
A since-deleted video posted on social media by Trump’s spokesman, Steven Cheung, showed Trump being shown the firearm and commenting, “I want to buy one.”
The post on X, formerly Twitter, said that Trump purchased the semi-automatic pistol.
But his campaign later told NBC News that Trump did not actually end up completing the purchase.
Cheung did not respond to CNBC’s questions about his post.
Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, this year has been indicted in four separate criminal cases.
Federal law bars people under indictment from buying a gun.
However, that statute was ruled to be unconstitutional by a federal judge in Texas in September 2022. The judge in that ruling cited a Supreme Court decision that struck down a New York gun restriction earlier that year, calling into question a slew of gun control laws.
Trump faces a total of 91 felony counts across the four cases. He has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.
Cheung’s brief video was taken at Palmetto State Armory, a gun store in Summerville, South Carolina, during an unscheduled campaign stop.
In it, Trump admires the handgun being held by a person next to him.
“Wow,” Trump says in the video as he points to the gun.
“I’ve got to buy one. I want to buy one,” he says.
The person holding the gun gives a brief response, and Trump replies again, “No, I want to buy one.”
Tens of thousands of people in the U.S. die in gun-related incidents each year. Injuries involving guns are the top cause of death for children and adolescents, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There were 48,830 total gun deaths in 2021, the most recent year for which such data is available from the CDC. That was the highest gun death tally ever in the U.S.
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