MEDIAWATCH: NRA speech rouses French fury

NEWSER) – Former French President Francois Hollande has two words for President Trump’s claim that gun-toting Parisians could have thwarted ISIS attackers at Paris’ Bataclan concert hall: “indecent and despicable.” French anger erupted over the weekend at Trump’s comments to the National Rifle Association—and especially at his trigger-firing hand gesture imitating the Bataclan attackers, the AP  news agency reports.

Multiple extremists with explosive belts and assault weapons killed 130 people in the 2015 attacks on the Bataclan, Paris cafes, and the national stadium. Hollande, president during the attacks, called Trump’s gesture “obscene.”

Speaking to BFM television Sunday, Hollande called Trump’s comments “intolerable” for the survivors and victims’ families. France’s government vigorously defended its gun controls, and pressure mounted on President Emmanuel Macron to demand an apology from Trump despite their friendly relationship. The country’s foreign ministry issued a statement expressing its “firm disapproval” of the remarks, France24 reports. Philippe Duperron, president of the survivors association 13onze15, said the group was “outraged” and added: “No weapon would have changed the outcome because there were suicide bombers wearing explosive belts who were going to blow themselves  up in the places they were attacking.”