Jesse Hughes, the lead singer for the band Eagles of Death Metal, has claimed that the attacks by Islamic State (Isis/Daesh) suicide bombers on the Bataclan theatre in Paris could have been stopped if the audience had been armed.

Attacking French gun control laws, Hughes said that the 90 deaths at the Eagles of Death Metal concert on 13 November could have been at least partially prevented if the audience had universal access to guns.

Did your French gun control stop a single f**king person from dying at the Bataclan? And if anyone can answer yes, Id like to hear it, because I dont think so. I think the only thing that stopped it was some of the bravest men that Ive ever seen in my life charging head-first into the face of death with their firearms, Hughes told French television station iTélé in an emotional interview.

I know people will disagree, but it just seems like God made men and women, and that night, guns made them equal. And I hate it that its that way. I think the only way that my mind has been changed is that maybe that until nobody has guns, everybody has to have them.

Because Ive never seen anyone thats ever had one dead, and I want everyone to have access to them, and I saw people die that maybe could have lived, I dont know, he added.

Hughes, a long-term gun advocate, made the remarks ahead of the Eagles of Death Metal concert at the Olympia concert hall in Paris on Tuesday (16 February). Survivors of the Bataclan massacres were given free tickets to the show.

While the Paris attacks, which killed 130 across the French capital at the end of 2015, led to virtually no calls for an end to gun control in Europe, the events became highly politicised in the US, where it is a national issue.

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump stirred controversy when, in the immediate aftermath of the attacks in Paris, he claimed the Paris massacre would have been much different if people had guns in France.