Ben Carson: Guns Would Have Helped Jews During Holocaust

During a CNN interview Thursday that was largely spent defending his controversial comments after the Oregon campus shootings, Ben Carson made another controversial statement, this time about the Holocaust. "I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed," he said. "I'm telling you there is a reason these dictatorial people take the guns first." As ABC News reports, Carson was on the subject in the first place because his new book, A Perfect Union, includes the line: "Through a combination of removing guns and disseminating propaganda, the Nazis were able to carry out their evil intentions with relatively little resistance." The CNN interviewer asked him, "Just to clarify, if there had been no gun control laws in Europe at that time, would 6 million Jews have been slaughtered?"

The Anti-Defamation League was quick to respond: "Ben Carson has a right to his views on gun control, but the notion that Hitler’s gun-control policy contributed to the Holocaust is historically inaccurate," says the organization's national director. "The small number of personal firearms available to Germany’s Jews in 1938 could in no way have stopped the totalitarian power of the Nazi German state." Another odd Carson quote from an interview with Sirius XM Wednesday: "I have had a gun held on me when I was in a Popeye's organization," he said, referring to the fast food chain. "Guy comes in, put the gun in my ribs. And I just said, 'I believe that you want the guy behind the counter.'" That line led to this headline on the Raw Story: "Ben Carson: I got held up once at Popeye’s—but I told the gunman to rob an employee, instead." (More Ben Carson stories.)