NRA executive Wayne LaPierre on Navy Yard shooting: There weren't enough good guys with guns

Then, LaPierre said that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

On Sunday morning, in an appearance on  NBC 's Meet the Press, LaPierre said that his logic applies to last week's shooting, in which a military installation with armed guards was targeted. "The whole country, David, knows the problem is there weren't enough good guys with guns," LaPierre told NBC's David Gregory.

"How could anybody look at what happened this week and say there was enough security there?" LaPierre asked. "I mean, there was one guy — a private security firm. God bless him, he ran toward the fire. There were six others there that were guarding the gates. The Capitol Hill SWAT team was told to stand down. Where's the outrage about that?"

LaPierre identified lowered response times for shootings as a way to prevent further mass killings. But he also placed blame for rampages on the country's mental health system.

People like Aaron Alexis, the Navy Yard shooter who had a history of violent behavior and mental illness, should be committed to mental health institutions, according LaPierre.

And when asked by Gregory if Americans who display symptoms of mental sickness should be held to a higher standard of scrutiny for background checks when buying firearms, LaPierre agreed.

"Yeah, let's do whatever we can," he said. "Let's fix this broken system right now, which nobody wants to fix."

LaPierre went on to say that " if we leave these homicidal maniacs on the street, they don't obey the law, they could care less about it, they're going to kill," said LaPierre. "The only — yet the only way you can stop them is they send up the red flags. It's practically like a plane going down the beach with a sign behind saying: I'm dangerous."