U.S. presidential hopeful Ben Carson is facing backlash over a statement suggesting the Holocaust could have been ‘diminished’ if the Jewish people in Germany had easy access to guns.
Carson clarified those statements made in his book to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Thursday.
“I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if they had been armed,” he said.
“There were a number of countries where tyranny reigned, and before it happened, they disarmed the people.”
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The statement received swift criticism online, and many people spoke out condemning his position.
“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,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
“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. … In short, gun control did not cause the Holocaust; Nazism and anti-Semitism did.”
Blitzer asked Carson about his position after reading a statement from his recently released book, A Perfect Union.
The statement from the book reads:
“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 … Through a combination of removing guns and disseminating deceitful propaganda, the Nazis were able to carry out their evil intentions with relatively little resistance.”
Carson has been in the spotlight this week talking about his views on gun control in the wake of a deadly school shooting in Oregon last week.
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