WASHINGTON: The US media on Wednesday interpreted Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s latest remarks as a call to America’s gun owners to assassinate his rival Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Addressing a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Tuesday, Mr Trump said that Mrs Clinton was against the Second Amendment to the US Constitution that allows Americans to keep unlicensed weapons.

He said that if elected president, she would appoint Supreme Court judges who favour stricter gun control measures. He then made the controversial remark that alarmed many Americans.

“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Mr Trump said, adding: “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.” Although oblique, the remark elicited a wave of condemnation from both Republicans and Democrats, who interpreted it as suggesting violence against Mrs Clinton or the judges she appoints.

Bernice A. King, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., told The New York Times that Mr Trump’s words were “distasteful, disturbing, dangerous.”

“Mr Trump floated the possibility that the only way his opponent, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, might be kept from appointing pro-gun-control Supreme Court justices is if she’s assassinated,” noted a Chicago Tribune columnist Rex Huppke.

“Hinting at assassination is too much, even for him,” wrote The Daily News, New York. “Mr Trump must go”. The Wall Street Journal, a pro-Republican newspaper, commented that Mr Trump had “confounded the hopes of Republicans who want him to run a more measured presidential campaign.”

The newspaper noted that his off-the-cuff remark at an election rally had “touched off another firestorm” because critics interpreted it as inciting violence against Mrs Clinton.

In an editorial titled “Further Into the Muck With Mr Trump,” The New York Times wrote: “Seldom, if ever, have Americans been exposed to a candidate so willing to descend to the depths of bigotry and intolerance as Mr Trump.”

The paper noted that Tuesday’s comment came amid sinking poll numbers and a wave of Republican defections and showed that ‘when bathed in the adulation of a crowd, Mr Trump is unable to control himself.”

Veteran New York Times commentator Thomas Friedman interpreted the comment as Mr Trump’s “wink, wink” to gun owners, and noted that this was “how Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin got assassinated.” He called Mr Trump “a disgusting human being.” The Washington Post noted that Mr Trump had a history of making outrageous statements and them denying them.

The Post also published a piece by a former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough who urged his party to ditch Mr Trump. “The Muslim ban, the David Duke denial, the “Mexican” judge flap, the draft dodger denigrating John McCain’s military service, the son of privilege attacking an immigrant Gold Star mother (Ghazala Khan) and the constant revisionism and lying about past political positions taken are but a few of the lowlights that have punctuated Donald Trump’s chaotic chase for the presidency,” Mr Scarborough wrote.

He noted that Mr Trump survived all these but this time he had crossed “a bloody line … that cannot be ignored.”

The Republican Party has to “act decisively and get this political train wreck off the tracks before something terrible happens,” he added.

USA Today noted that Mr Trump regards the “Second Amendment people” as his “secret weapon” in the campaign.

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2016