As Democrats renew a push for gun control after the recent school shooting in Oregon, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson argues in his new book that an armed citizenry is needed to protect the people against “tyrants” and “radicals.”
“Only law-abiding citizens are affected by legislation imposing gun control,” Carson writes in the book. “The criminals don’t care what the law says, which is why they are criminals. Confiscating the guns of American citizens would violate the Constitution as well as rendering the citizenry vulnerable to criminals and tyrants.”
Carson’s new book, “A More Perfect Union: What We The People Can Do To Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties,” is set for release Tuesday.
In the book, the former neurosurgeon argues that firearms should be not restricted because “our founders recognized that ‘we the People’ could represent a significant fighting force if necessary to repel an invasion by foreign forces. They also knew that an armed population would discourage government overreach.”
“The founders feared an overbearing central government might attempt to dominate the people and severely curtail their rights,” Carson writes. “This, in fact, is the primary reason that the Second Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights.” (RELATED: Clinton Threatens Unilateral Gun Control)
Carson acknowledges that many people might find it “ludicrous to imagine our federal government trying to seize unconstitutional power and dominate the people.” But citing James Madison, Carson said the founder “could foresee a day in America when radicals might assume power and try to impose upon America a different system of government.”
“His hope was that the establishment of such a different way of life would be difficult in America, because American citizens, having the right to keep and bear arms, would rebel,” Carson writes.
The Republican presidential candidate also references Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, writing how “German citizens were disarmed by their government in the late 1930s, and by the mid-1940s Hitler’s regime had mercilessly slaughtered six million Jews and numerous others whom they considered inferior.”
Carson, who previously supported tougher gun control measures, said his views changed after studying the Constitution.
“Some will say that they see no problem with small handguns and hunting rifles, perhaps even shotguns,” he writes. “They are opposed to more powerful weaponry such as assault rifles and armor-penetrating ammunition. I too was a member of that camp until I fully recognized the intent of the Second Amendment, which is to protect the freedom of the people from an overly aggressive government.”
Carson writes that Americans “would be at a great disadvantage if they were attacked by an overly aggressive government and all they had to defend themselves with were minor firearms.”
The former neurosurgeon offers one suggestion for cutting down on gun deaths in the United States.
“Rather than trying to control or confiscate guns, it might be smarter to offer free, public gun-safety courses,” he says. “In countries like Switzerland, every man within a certain age range is required to possess a gun and to know how to use it, and Switzerland had one of the lowest gun homicide rates in the world.”