GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson has responded to last week’s shooting at Umpqua Community College in a couple of interviews and a Facebook post. Basically, he doesn’t think the shooting should lead to any increase in gun control laws.
“As a Doctor, I spent many a night pulling bullets out of bodies,” Carson wrote on Facebook. “There is no doubt that this senseless violence is breathtaking – but I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away.”
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Posted by Dr. Ben Carson on Monday, October 5, 2015
In other words, taking away the right to own guns is far worse than people dying from gun violence. We’ll let you figure out how you feel about that statement.
“If I had a little kid in kindergarten somewhere I would feel much more comfortable if I knew on that campus there was a police officer or somebody who was trained with a weapon,” he said in an interview with Capital Download, a series made by USA Today. He added that he would want the teacher to have a gun as well, as long as they were trained in how to use it.
While we evaluate these statements, let’s not forget that over 300,000 people in the U.S. have died from gun violence in the last decade, and there have been 142 school shootings just since Sandy Hook in 2012. Just last week, an 11-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed his 12-year-old brother with a gun that had been left lying around.
It doesn’t take a neurosurgeon to figure out that maybe giving more guns to people who hang out around children isn’t the best policy. But Carson doesn’t want to “use these tragedies to advance a political agenda,” as he said in his Facebook post.
Carson also talked to Fox & Friends about the shooting on Tuesday, putting himself in the victims’ shoes.
“I would not just stand there and let him shoot me,” Carson said. “I would say, ‘Hey, guys, everybody attack him. He may shoot me, but he can’t get us all.'”
Well, it’s always good to know how a potential future president would take the lead in a school shooting situation. Keep capturing America’s hearts and minds, Dr. Carson.