Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump appeared on CNN's State of the Union Sunday and discussed the recent shooting in Lafayette, Louisiana.

John Russell Houser, 59, stood up about 20 minutes into a Thursday night showing of "Trainwreck" and opened fire the audience, killing two people and wounding nine with a semi-automatic handgun.

Despite his spotty record on gun rights, Trump called himself a "big Second Amendment person" before discussing the tragedy.

“These are sick people,” he said. “This has nothing to do with guns, this has to do with the mentality of these people.”

Trump said things would have been different if people in the theater could have been armed because people need “protection against the bad ones who have the guns.”

“You take them away from the good people, and the bad ones are going to have target practice,” the billionaire said, bringing up the recent shooting in Chattanooga. “

Like for instance, the gun free zone with the Marines [in Chattanooga], that was disgraceful…This guy shot them, they were like sitting ducks…and if they would have had their guns, they probably would all be alive or most of them.”

Trump said we have to "protect our Second Amendment" and not keep taking "little chunks out."

Host Jake Tapper asked if those same Second Amendment rights applied to Houser, who had been involuntarily committed previously.

Trump said there was "a very fine line."

“You’ve got to do it very judiciously. If a person is mentally ill and it’s proven and it’s documented, you have to be extremely careful not to let them kill people," he said.

"Frankly, he should be committed. Because he has the kind of a record where he should be in a institution. He was a very sick puppy.”

Watch the video via Raw Story: