Ben Carson: I Would Not Just Stand There and Let Oregon Attacker Shoot Me

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson told Fox News on Tuesday morning that he’d have taken a different approach if he had been approached by the Oregon shooter.

“Not only would I probably not cooperate with him, I would not just stand there and let him shoot me,” Carson told Fox & Friends on Tuesday in response to a question about how he’d have handled the gunman in a hypothetical situation. “I would say: ‘Hey, guys, everybody attack him! He may shoot me but he can’t get us all.'”

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Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon was the site of a mass shooting that killed 10 people, including gunman Christopher Harper-Mercer, on October 1. Harper-Mercer asked students in a classroom if they were Christian before shooting them. The day after the attack, Carson tweeted a photograph of himself with a sign declaring, “I am a Christian.”

On Monday evening, before his appearance on Fox & Friends, Carson wrote a Facebook post on his thoughts about gun control. In the post, Carson says he remains against gun control, despite seeing “plenty of gun violence as a child.”

“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,” he wrote.

Republicans, traditionally staunch supporters of the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms, have gone on the defensive after the shooting spree. Carson mentioned earlier in the interview that mental health is something that needs to be studied. “Of course it’s the person behind the gun,” he said. “Guns don’t kill people.”

Commenting on some residents hesitant of a planned visit by President Barack Obama to the area to meet with victims and the community, Carson said that traveling to the area would not have been on his agenda. “Probably not,” he said. “I mean, I would probably have so many things on my agenda that I would go to the next one.”

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