2015 has seen upwards of 300 mass shootings and yet almost nothing has been done at the national level to effectively combat this. One poll found that almost 90 percent of Americans support additional background checks, with similar findings in many other polls conducted on the same issue.<\/p>\n
Gun control is one of the most important topics of the primaries for the upcoming 2016 presidential election. Republican presidential hopeful Dr. Ben Carson has shown little sensitivity for the victims of mass shootings. On the Umpqua Community College shooting in ORegon, he claimed that, “Not only would I probably not cooperate with him, I 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.'”<\/p>\n
Carson\u2019s comments on the victims at Umpqua Community College have especially outraged those personally affected by the shooting. Michael Downing, an 18-year old student at Umpqua who was singled out by the gunman to survive, told CNN, \u201cNobody could truly understand what actions they would take like that in a situation unless they lived it.\u201d He\u2019s absolutely right. While Carson\u2019s comments aren\u2019t completely illogical, they are completely inappropriate, especially when shootings like this one are commonplace. Is Carson\u2019s proposed solution to the widespread gun violence problem to simply have victims fight back? What he might not understand is that not everyone is in the same state of mind when a gunman armed with an assault weapon walks into a room full of innocent people. There is no time to plan a counterattack; to suggest that is absurd. This is real life, not Call of Duty<\/em>, and for Carson to blame the victims\u2019 decision-making as the reason they died is ridiculous and insensitive.<\/p>\n Ben Carson was recently interviewed about the time he was held at gunpoint in a Popeye\u2019s restaurant. When the gunman pressed the gun to his ribs, he responded, \u201cI believe you want the guy behind the counter.\u201d Would Carson have actually charged at a shooter, telling other victims, \u201cHe may shoot me, but he can\u2019t get us all?\u201d I think not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 2015 has seen upwards of 300 mass shootings and yet almost nothing has been done at the national level to effectively combat this. One poll…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":116,"featured_media":15285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[2517],"coauthors":[2347],"class_list":["post-15284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions","tag-op-ed"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15284"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15328,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15284\/revisions\/15328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15284"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=15284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}