Ben Carson: Guns are ‘baton of freedom’

Dr. Ben Carson, a potential 2016 GOP presidential contender, called firearms the “baton of freedom” in a speech to the National Rifle Association on Friday.

“The baton of freedom is in our hands,” Carson said at the National Rifle Association Leadership Forum in Nashville.

Offering a vigorous defense of right to own firearms, Carson argued that it is essential to protecting against government overreach and defending other freedoms.

{mosads}“We must make absolutely sure that we will never let the right to keep and bear arms be removed from those who follow us in this nation,” he continued.

“Let me make it absolutely clear that I am extremely pro-Second Amendment,” he said. “I will never let anyone tamper with that right.”

Carson also said Americans needed guns for fighting terrorists when government could not or would not do it for them.

“We need to be able to fight them ourselves,” he said. “They are going to get in here any way they can,” he said of radical Islamists potentially breaching U.S. borders.

“When they get here we have to be able to fight them any way we can,” Carson concluded.

Carson spoke personally of the frequent “carnage” he saw guns cause while growing up in crime-ridden Detroit. As a former neurosurgeon, he also saw devastating wounds caused by headshots.

“It was horrible,” he reflected. “But I can assure you it is nowhere near as horrible as having an unarmed populace under an armed government.