The gun control message that President Obama delivered Thursday in the wake of the mass shooting at a Charleston, S.C., church is “certainly not the tone that I would have adopted,” said former pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson. “I think we have to start going to the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is not guns. The heart of the matter is the heart — the heart and soul of people.”
Hate is “destroying our nation,” said the Republican candidate for president, elaborating on the “Kelly File” Thursday night that the war on women, race wars, income wars, age wars and religious wars, have led to a divisive country. “Anything you can imagine, we have a war on it, and we’re giving people a license to hate people who disagree with them, to try to destroy their lives … this will have consequences in our society.”
“We have to recognize that this is going to destroy us as a nation, just as fast as any of the other factors, and there are multiple of them that threaten to do the same thing,” said Carson.
Earlier Thursday, Carson wrote that while “racial based hate is still very much alive” he is worried that “the new battle ground of evil” is “our intolerance of one another” because “many feel it is ok to hate someone who thinks differently than you do.”
“I hope we the American people can come to the understanding that we are not each other’s enemies,” Carson told Megyn Kelly. “The enemies are those who are stoking the flames of division trying to divide us in every category and weakening us as a society. You don’t have to be all that observant to see what’s happening to us.”
Carson also said that something in the suspected shooter’s “upbringing and background” must have “led to the type of mentality that would allow him to do something like this” because “this young man didn’t wake up yesterday and suddenly turn into a maniac.”
“[O]ne of the things that I think we really need to start concentrating on in this country is once again instilling the right kinds of values, particularly in our young people,” said Carson. “You know we’re so busy giving away all of our values and principles for the sake of political correctness that we have people floating around out there with no solid foundation of beliefs.”
Kelly asked Carson whether he agreed with Obama’s remark Thursday that what happened in Charleston raises “questions about the dark part of our history” where black churches were targeted, and Carson replied: “We have succumbed to the purveyors of division” in many different ways, including on race. “And it’s going to be up to us … to begin to focus on the positive things, on the things that we have in common, and stop listening to those who are stoking the fires of division,” Carson said.
