Texas radio host: Calling gay nightclub shooting a hate crime is a 'huge victory for ISIS'

San Antonio radio host Jack Riccardi argued on Tuesday that the terrorist attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando could not be considered a hate crime because some of the victims were straight.

During his Tuesday radio broadcast, Riccardi pushed back against the call for new gun safety regulations following the massacre of 49 people at the Pulse night club.

"The fact is that if [shooter] Omar Mateen cannot stand for every Muslim in the world then he also cannot stand for every person that owns a gun," he opined. "And if it's illogical to judge all Muslims and their motivations by what he did then it's also illogical to judge all people that own a gun or seek to procure a gun or have a concealed carry license by what he did."

"And we have to remember that if this was just what some people want to call a hate crime," he continued, "then the whole reason we have hate crimes or the definition of hate crimes is because the premise is, right, the presumption is, well, that group that is protected by the hate crime law is a minority, is a tiny group, they don't have strength in numbers, people wouldn't care, the law wouldn't care therefore we need hate crime laws so that the person doing these things gets punished."

Riccardi added that he did not agree with the premise of hate crime laws, and that the Orlando shooting did not meet the definition of a hate crime because not all of the victims were LGBT people.

"I think you are going to find when we get to know these victims that they were gay, straight, all different ages, all different walks of life," he remarked. "And I think it is a huge mistake and it hands a huge victory to Isis if we allow ourselves to put this in a pigeon hole of, 'Well, this was a hate crime, this was a gay crime.'"

Watch the video below from KTSA, broadcast June 14, 2016.