Ben Carson had a lot of outrageous stuff to say about the Oregon murders
Last week, after a gunman shot and killed nine people at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, a lot of people had a lot to say about why new gun control laws were not the way to prevent future shootings.
No one, however, had more stuff to say than presidential hopeful Ben Carson.
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It started this weekend, when Ben Carson suggested that one potential solution to school shootings was arming kindergarten teachers.
In an interview with USA Today‘s Capitol Download video series (via Gawker), Carson said:
“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 says. Including the teacher? “If the teacher was trained in the use of that weapon and had access to it, I would be much more comfortable if they had one than if they didn’t.”
Of course, according to the Department of Education, gun-free zones (like most schools), are statistically safer, by a wide margin, than non-gun-free zones.
Not willing to say “give guns to kindergarten teachers” and call it a day, Carson appeared on Fox & Friends on Tuesday morning and basically insulted the UCC victims and questioned their actions before being murdered. Responding to a Brian Kilmeade question about the murderer, Carson said he would not “cooperate” with such a person. Moreover:
“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.'”
As the Huffington Post reminds us, Army veteran Chris Mintz did exactly that and was shot seven times. He’s currently recovering in a hospital.
Later in the interview, Carson criticized Barack Obama for visiting with the victims’ families, saying that as president he would skip meeting with the living victims and the families of the deceased. Again, prompted by Kilmeade, who asks him if he would go if he were president (emphasis ours):
“I mean, I would probably have so many things on my agenda that I would go to the next one.”
He would go to the next one. Terrific.
Carson also got in a few bits of pablum about mental health issues being the real problem for good measure, too.
Watch the whole segment with Carson over on the Fox & Friends site if you want to.
David Matthews operates the Wayback Machine on Fusion.net—hop on. Got a tip? Email him: [email protected]