Ben Carson on Wednesday said he wants to “plant in people's minds” the idea that they should attempt to rush an active shooter, the latest in a string of controversial comments the GOP presidential candidate has made in response to last week’s mass shooting in Oregon.
On Tuesday, Carson said he “would not just stand there and let him shoot me. I would say, ‘Hey guys, everybody attack him. He may shoot me but he can’t get us all.’”
When asked about the comments on CBS “This Morning” on Wednesday, Carson said, “I want to plant in people's minds what to do in a situation like this because unfortunately this is probably not going to be the last time this happens.”
The Department of Homeland Security recommends attempting to incapacitate an active shooter “as a last resort, and only when your life is in imminent danger.” They recommend attempting to evacuate or hide before attacking a shooter.
Carson said on Fox News on Tuesday that he is not judging the nine victims killed at Umpqua Community College. He indicated on CBS that he did not know about Chris Mintz, the Army veteran who rushed the shooter and helped prevent more deaths, but after hearing about his actions said it “verifies what I’m saying.”
Carson has made a number of eyebrow raising comments since the shooting last Thursday.
In one of his signature Facebook Q&As Monday night, the former neurosurgeon wrote that he had operated on victims of gun violence "but I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away."
Responding to a questioner who asked whether the tragedy had altered his position on the Second Amendment, Carson suggested new gun-control laws wouldn't solve the problem and accused Democrats of "us[ing] these tragedies to advance a political agenda."
In a separate interview with USA Today released Tuesday, Carson suggested that, if he had a child in kindergarten, he would want school security guards - and even possibly that child's teacher - to be armed.
"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," he said.
Carson first weighed in on the shooting last week, telling reporters in Iowa that the solution should be to collect data on shooters to try to find "early warnings" to prevent future cases, not stricter gun laws.
"You're not going to handle [the issue] with more gun control because gun control only works for normal law abiding citizens, it doesn't work for crazies," he said then.
In the USA Today interview, Carson also shot back at critics who say that his expertise as a neurosurgeon would not prepare him for the presidency.
"You don't need to know nearly as much to be able to maneuver in the political world as you do in the operating room inside of somebody's brain. It's not even close," he said.
