Ben Carson walks back guns in urban areas comment
And doesn’t seem to know guns that well:
Carson said that “under no circumstances” would he “allow a bureaucrat to remove any law-abiding citizen’s rights for any kind of weapon that they want to protect themselves.”
If he were in a position of national leadership, Carson said he would seek to allow people to possess any kind of weapon they can legally buy, including “automatic weapons and semi-automatic weapons.”
And good for him for pointing out the obvious:
Asked by one call participant whether he would support convicted felons being allowed to possess guns after serving their time, Carson said it would “depend on what kind of criminal activity they were convicted for.” He added, “Is this somebody who is still considered a danger to society? If that’s the case, they probably still should be in prison.”
Carson said a “mental patient” or someone with “history of violence” shouldn’t be able to own “anything” to “wreak havoc on society.” That, he said, could be part of a “reasonable” gun-control law. The government also shouldn’t “retrospectively” go back to make once-legal guns illegal, he said.
January 28th, 2015 at 7:09 pm
“allow people to possess any kind of weapon they can legally buy”. Doesn’t that just pass the buck to legislators?
January 28th, 2015 at 7:48 pm
Yes it does, Leatherwing. A good question for candidates on this issue is to ask them to cite the “delegated power” in the Constitution which allows Congress to legislate any gun laws which apply to the people because according to an objective reading of the 10th Amendment, the Federal government may do NOTHING without delegated power.
January 28th, 2015 at 7:59 pm
I think he meant “legally buy right now“; just another way of saying he doesn’t support changing the status quo.
January 28th, 2015 at 9:17 pm
“Is this somebody who is still considered a danger to society? If that’s the case, they probably still should be in prison.”
He’s been getting educated.
I expand on that and say prohibition on possessing firearms is a fair condition for parole or early release, but once duration of the sentence has expired then all freedoms must be restored.
Then again, if society adopts such a legal philosophy, the authoritarian workaround is liberal use of ‘life sentences’ with frequent early release.
January 28th, 2015 at 9:28 pm
Sigivald, I think you are correct, that is probably what he meant. But if he is the great presidential leader people are making him out to be, he should be able to articulate that thought clearly, rather than depend on us interpreting what he meant.
I like Dr. Carson, think he has done some good things, but I don’t think he’d be a good president. I think there is too much “we see your black liberal and raise you one black conservative” in promoting him as a candidate.
January 28th, 2015 at 10:21 pm
My vote will never again go to anyone who admits to wanting to limit an enumerated Constitutional right. Never again. Never. No matter if Bronco Bama is President for the next 20 years. Let’s get this over with.
January 29th, 2015 at 1:07 am
Backwoods Eng., that is my litmus test.
If some jackwad wants to limit my God given rights, there need not be any further discussion.
They have proven themselves to be a thug dressed as a ‘good guy’ and can go to hell.
I will NEVER vote for some bunghole that thinks my rights are negotiable. Candidate A thinks that gun law X is “reasonable”. Well you go ahead and try to whitewash it Skippy but I’ll be putting in time for your opponent.
January 29th, 2015 at 8:57 am
What Backwoods and KM said.
January 29th, 2015 at 10:23 am
Who gets to decide the danger factor? A panel of doctors, maybe? Thought so. The novelty of Carson is not his color, it’s his profession. I had doctors and lawyers as “clients” (important customers whose every whim is Gospel) for many years, and it would be hard to call which had more [limitation on knowledge outside their field] and [arrogance that their field represented the whole of human endeavor]. So far, he shows a little bit of “epistemological” humility, which is rare and refreshing. But I want to see a lot more of that. He sure seems like a nice guy.
There’s supposed to be a big difference between a misdemeanant and a felon. Felony is sort of special. Lifetime limitation on rights may be just for a felon, but I can’t say for sure because we’ve voted ourselves so many felonies. I might change my mind. We ought to have a long argument about it, but first we need to straighten out some definitions. I wonder if we can.
January 29th, 2015 at 10:39 am
Dr. Carson is the guy who demonstrated that slicing a kid’s brain in half could sometimes cure continuous seizures (oversimplified to an extreme). He isn’t an ordinary doctor, he is a freaking brain surgeon, and among the best of those that has ever been. In his field, he is a special kind of special.
I’d rather see him “learning” in the direction his recent statements demonstrate than see any newly-elected Republican “evolving” as they often do towards statism.
January 29th, 2015 at 12:30 pm
Forget what you THOUGHT he meant, or what you HOPE he meant. If you parse the words carefully, he could be for a total ban on all firearms for all we know. “Bureaucrats” are not necessarily the legislators. “Any gun you can legally buy” would be no gun at all under a total ban, and so on. Status quo is not mentioned. He said nothing whatsoever, and he’s plenty smart enough to know what he said.
When someone is speaking clearly, you’ll know it. Carson is an elitist fuck.
January 29th, 2015 at 6:37 pm
He is a pediatrician, a specialty that has become notorious for anti-gun propaganda. He is affiliated with John Hopkins which is also notorious for anti-gun propaganda. I copied the below statement from their website.
“The new face of The Johns Hopkins Hospital is a $1.1-billion construction project. The new hospital features two 12-story towers: The Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children’s Center, named in honor of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s late mother, and the Sheikh Zayed Tower, named to honor the first president and founder of the United Arab Emirates. The two towers sprawl over five acres — or the size of five football fields. ”
Call me suspicious.
January 29th, 2015 at 11:22 pm
Perhaps Dr Carson could get some Constitutional education from a fellow physician and former Congressman, Dr Ron Paul. He knows the delegated power constraints that the Constitution mandates to our public servants. For starters on the RKBA, he says the BATF should be eliminated. That’s correct because the Federal Gov’t only has delegated power ” for governing such part of them (the militia) as may be called into service and EMPLOYED by the United States.” (Article I, Section 8.16)
The question is NOT to the people, “why do you need that? ” , but to the government, “where is your delegated power for that?”
January 30th, 2015 at 5:58 pm
Or Rand Paul. When he met with gun owners in NH, they were concerned with the UN treaty. His suggestion was to abolish the UN.