Oops! Sorry, Dr. Carson, but you're in Wingnuttia now, and in Wingnuttia, this is not considered Correct Thinking:
Dr. Ben Carson ... argued that while Officer Darren Wilson did nothing wrong in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, police should be better trained in non-lethal force such as shooting aggressors in the legs on Tuesday's "Hugh Hewitt Show."This happened before Thansksgiving, but the folks at Free Republic are still telling him that these are very wrong answers:
"First of all, I don’t think that the police officer did anything wrong. Nevertheless, there are probably additional techniques and knowledge that he could have been given. So all along, we probably need to beef up the instructions for police officers in general so that they don't place themselves in such dangerous situations" he stated.
Carson continued, "he [Wilson] had every right to protect his life. But I do think that there are probably other techniques that could have been used." ...
For such a smart guy Dr. Carson is remarkably stupid.The latter is a reference to Carson's best-known deviation from conservative correctness, from 2013:
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That's like the idiots who say "why didn't Officer Jones just shoot the pistol out of his hand?" or "why didn't Officer O'Leery just use his stun gun?" and etc...
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Well, there goes my vote for president.
Last time I heard that one used, it was Warren Christopher asking the Delta Force commanding officer if he could refrain from killing Iranians of the ill fated hostage rescue mission and simply shoot them in the leg instead.
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Hollywood shooting invading common sense
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Carson is a "nice guy" but not Presidential material.
He doesn't fully understand the "rights come from God" thing either.
Appearing on Glenn Beck's radio show this past week, Dr. Benjamin Carson took a vastly different stance from most conservatives on the issue of gun control, claiming you shouldn't be able to own semi-automatic weapons in large cities....Every True Conservative knows that gun rights are absolute (and, just for the record, come from God).This is hurting Carson as he begins ramping up his presidential campaign, so recently he recanted:
Asked by Beck for his thoughts on the Second Amendment, Carson gave the popular pro-gun argument: "There's a reason for the Second Amendment; people do have the right to have weapons."
But when asked whether people should be allowed to own "semi-automatic weapons," the doctor replied: "It depends on where you live."
"I think if you live in the midst of a lot of people, and I'm afraid that that semi-automatic weapon is going to fall into the hands of a crazy person, I would rather you not have it," Carson elaborated.
However, if you live "out in the country somewhere by yourself" and want to own a semi-automatic weapon, he added, "I've no problem with that."
As he inches closer to the prospect of a presidential campaign, Carson used a conference call to try to address questions about his loyalty to gun rights....Yes, Carson wants to make automatic weapons legal. Nice overcorrection, Doc!
"Perhaps I didn't convey it appropriately." he said. "I wanted to convey that, you know, I've lived in urban areas. I've worked in urban areas. I've seen a lot of carnage, and I'd prefer a situation where the kinds of weapons that create that kind of carnage don't fall to the hands of criminal elements or insane people. But that is secondary to the desire to always defend the Second Amendment."
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."
You may not think any of this matters -- who the hell is Dr. Ben Carson? -- but in the most recent Quinnipiac national poll of Republicans, he finished third in a potential Republican primary field, ahead of Paul, Rubio, Cruz, Ryan, Walker, Jindal, Huckabee, Perry, Portman, and Santorum. Can he win? Probably not -- but recall the article that ran in The New York Times yesterday about the GOP's success this year in attracting female and non-white candidates. The GOP really, really wants a not-embarrassing non-white candidate in the race (i.e., not a Herman Cain or Alan Keyes), just to make persuadable Republican voters who may yet have lingering qualms about racial inequities feel okay about ultimately voting GOP in November. Carson has endorsed young-earth creationism, and compared Obamacare to slaver,y and likened gay marriage to bestiality, but he comes off as serious most of the time, so the GOP thinks he can make the party look better.
But he has to learn how to thread the needle -- don't make divisive statements on social issues that alienate moderates, but also don't suggest that gun ownership is ever bad, and don't suggest that anything Darren Wilson did in dealing with Michael Brown could possibly have been a mistake. (Every right-winger, deep down, agrees 100% with RedState editor Ben Howe's fantasy of shooting Brown ion the face. And this goes equally for every non-white victim of police violence, even twelve-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland.)
It doesn't seems as if this comes easily to Carson. He may need more conservative reeducation than those who've pinned their hopes on him realize.
