How would Ben Carson have handled the Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon? On Tuesday, the Republican presidential candidate said he would attack the gunman. "I would not just stand there and let him shoot me," Carson said on Fox News. "I would say: 'Hey, guys, everybody attack him! He may shoot me, but he can't get us all.'"
But this is what someone tried against the Oregon shooter — and it didn't work out, as the New York Times's Alan Rappeport reported: "The heavily armed Oregon gunman killed nine people before taking his own life. The fact that an Army veteran who did try to stop him was shot multiple times and remains hospitalized underscores the risks of attacking an armed attacker, as numerous critics pointed out Tuesday."
Instead of suggesting that people attack shooters, a safer way to end gun violence may be preventing it from happening in the first place.
One way to do that is gun control: The US has more gun deaths than other developed nations, because, according to the research, Americans have more guns, and more guns mean more gun deaths. So reducing the number of guns — by limiting access to them, or by immediately cutting the supply of them through, for example, buyback programs — would very likely lead to fewer gun deaths.
But Carson is against gun control, writing on Monday, "As a doctor, I spent many a night pulling bullets out of bodies. 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."
