Why Ben Carson Is Right about Charging Attackers

Why Ben Carson Is Right about Charging Attackers October 8, 2015

Did you hear what Ben Carson said after the Oregon shooting that drove liberals nuts?

“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.’”

The New York Times accused him of insinuating that the victims didn’t do enough to protect themselves.

“No, I said nothing about them. I said what I would do,” he responded.  “I would ask everybody to attack the gunman because he can only shoot one of us at a time. That way we don’t all wind up dead.”

Later, on Megyn Kelly’s show, he elaborated:

David French adds, writing on National Review:

There was a time when the guidance for passengers in airplane hijackings could be summed up in one word: Cooperate. And on September 11, 2001, hijackers used that guidance to guarantee their control of three airplanes — the planes that later flew straight into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. But on one aircraft, the passengers learned that cooperation meant certain death, and they unilaterally changed the protocols. As a result, it’s now virtually unthinkable that American passengers will simply stand by and allow a hijacker to seize an airliner’s controls.

To hail the passengers of Flight 93 is not to condemn the passengers of Flight 11, Flight 175, and Flight 77. In a terrifying situation, they were doing what they were taught to do.


The current guidance for victims in mass-shooting situations is just as passive as the original guidance for hijacking victims. “Shelter in place,” they’re told. In other words, hide and wait for rescue. Carson is urging a change in the paradigm, to immediate group resistance. The key word here is “group.” The sad stories of mass shootings are replete with tales of individual heroism, of the one man who charged the attacker only to be shot down. In Oregon, Chris Mintz resisted and was shot multiple times. At Fort Hood, Captain John Gaffney reportedly died charging Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. But where one man fails, two or three can succeed — just ask Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos, and Anthony Sadler, the three American men who foiled an August terrorist attack on a French train.

In other words, Carson was right, and liberals need to quit feigning offense at his common sense words.

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