While other political candidates are calling for either gun control measures or arming teachers, GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson said Tuesday he'd have another strategy for a gunman like the one who killed students and a professor in Oregon last week: He'd probably stand up to the killer.
"Not only would I probably not cooperate with him, I would not just stand there and let him shoot me," the retired neurosurgeon told
Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program about the Oregon killer, who asked his victims if they were Christians before he shot them.
"I would say 'Hey guys, everybody attack him. He may shoot me but he can't get us all.'"
Last week, Christopher Harper-Mercer, 26, killed his English professor
and eight students at
Umpqua Community College in Roseburg before turning a gun on himself, asking his victims before shooting them if they were Christians, and Carson said that troubles him.
Carson pointed out that the United States has Judeo-Christian roots, and he wants to know why people seem to be so quick to throw that away.
"Why are we so busy trying to give those away for the sake of political correctness?" he said. "You know, when you give away your identity, you give away your soul."
Meanwhile, he told the program he believes President Barack Obama and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton are acting just like the politicians they are with their reactions to the Oregon mass shootings.
On Monday, just a few days after the shootings, Clinton presented
her gun control agenda, and while Carson said he's willing to hear ideas, he said her plan and others' proposals don't solve the issue.
"Imagine a politician politicizing something," Carson told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program. "When do we get to the point where we have people who actually want to solve our problems, rather than just politicize everything? I think that's what the American people are so sick and tired of."
"With all of these gun control plans I'm a very reasonable person," he said. "I don't get in the corner and just, you know, stonewall. If you can show me how that's going to stop these things, I'm willing to listen to it."
The problem is, such measures don't stop anything, he said.
"We need to be studying these individuals, being able to figure out who is the dangerous person so we can intervene," said Carson, "Not only to save the lives of people being shot, but to save the lives of the shooters ... guns don't kill people. And the Second Amendment is extremely important. [Founding Father] Daniel Webster said America would never suffer tyranny because the people are armed."
In Oregon, Roseburg newspaper publisher David Jakes has said Obama should cancel his plans for an appearance, because he would be standing "on the corpses of our loved ones to make some kind of a political point, and it isn't going to be well received." Carson agreed that if the people of that community do not want the president there, he shouldn't go.
"If the people don't want you to come, isn't this about the people?" he said. "This whole country of, for and by the people. Why don't people understand that?"
Also on the program, he discussed his rising numbers in the polls, particularly an Investor's Business Daily poll that put him above Donald Trump by seven points, at 24-17.
"Polls are going to go up and down, and I don't get too excited over them," he said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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