Readers React:  Standing up to Ben Carson

Amid the scores of angry and anguished letters responding this week to the latest senseless school shooting — this time in Oregon — and the attendant pleas, promises and calls for gun control or calls for more guns, there was also a bit of rather bemused head shaking over a politician’s soundbites.

After Republican candidate Ben Carson said this week that he would have “stood up to the Oregon shooter,” a number of Times readers took him to task. Here’s a sampling.

—Sara Lessley, Letters to the Editor department

Ephraim Mochson in Los Angeles offers his two cents:

Carson may have some expertise in neurosurgery, but he hasn’t a clue about guns. He was quoted as saying: “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.’”

Actually, an assault weapon can get them all.

Frank Ferrone in El Cajon continues the lesson:

In one short interview, Carson told the world who was responsible for 21 first-graders being killed in the Sandy Hook massacre: It was the elementary school teacher, of course .

“If I had a little kid in kindergarten somewhere, I would feel much more comfortable if I knew on that campus there was a police officer or somebody who was trained with a weapon,” said Carson, who is the father of three grown sons. “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.”

So, by his logic, apparently, had that Sandy Hook teacher kept her wits about her, she would have calmly pulled out a smoke grenade from her desk and created a diversionary tactic to confuse the shooter standing in front of her with an assault rifle. She’d have gone to the lockbox that contained her own weapon, unfastened and removed the weapon and taken down the shooter.

The world just can’t wait for his next proclamation.

Vince Scully in Long Beach wonders and worries:

Carson fervently believes in guns, suggesting that a well-armed population is needed to defend itself against tyranny. The question, of course, is just who decides what is tyrannical?

While I hate to be a fear-monger like my conservative friends, when you have a sizable percentage of the population that is extremely angry, very well armed and staunchly agrees that “government is the problem,” you have the foundation for civil war.

Shane Brolly in Sherman Oaks raps the candidate’s knuckles:

And I thought neurosurgeons were supposed to be smart. Carson, in his new book, insists that Americans must have access to assault rifles and armor-piercing ammunition to defend themselves from an overly aggressive government.

Really, Ben? You think those assault rifles will stave off a drone missile, an Abrams tank, the Army, Marines, or a nuclear bomb?

Ben, I feel you peddle this nonsense for political reasons — namely, getting on the NRA’s good side. Because of that, you’ve lost my vote.