Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson says he would be comfortable with kindergarten teachers and other school administrators having access to guns as a form of protection.
“If I had a little kid in kindergarten somewhere, I would feel much more comfortable if I knew on that campus there was a police officer or somebody who was trained with a weapon,” Carson said in an interview for USA Today’s Capital Download released Tuesday.
{mosads}”If the teacher was trained in the use of that weapon and had access to it, I would be much more comfortable if they had one than if they didn’t,” Carson added.
That is similar to what the National Rifle Association advocated following the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 children and six educators dead. After that shooting, the gun group called for trained and armed security guards at schools.
Gun violence returned to the national conversation last week when a man shot and killed nine people at a community college in Oregon.
Earlier Tuesday, during a Fox News interview, Carson suggested that if he were in the situation at the community college, he would have confronted the gunman.
He also spoke in the USA Today interview of reversing his support for a ban on assault weapons after “getting more into the history of this country and the history of other countries.”