“Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, in defending against criticisms of his relaxed demeanor on the campaign trail, opened up about his past ‘volatile’ behavior during an interview that aired Sunday,” cbsnews.com reports. “‘I have plenty of energy. But, you know, I am soft-spoken. I do have a tendency to be relaxed. I wasn’t always like that. There was a time when I was, you know, very volatile,’ Carson told NBC News. ‘But, you know, I changed.'” How volatile? . . . .
The retired neurosurgeon went on to explain that “as a teenager, I would go after people with rocks, and bricks, and baseball bats, and hammers.” He also spoke about the time, at 14 years old, when he “tried to stab someone” — a well-known story of Carson attacking a friend during an argument over preferred radio stations. He missed: the knife hit the teenager’s belt buckle and snapped.
Note: Carson wasn’t charged with attempted murder for this incident. Or assault with a dangerous weapon. Or anything, as far as we know (his record may have been expunged). But his admission about “going after people” with deadly weapons raises questions about Carson’s position on firearms freedom.
In the wide-ranging interview on NBC News, the Republican contender also spoke about gun control and his stance in staunchly backing the Second Amendment.
“Noah Webster said that America would never suffer under tyranny if people were armed,” Carson said, repeating an oft-quoted line from the campaign trail. But, “of course, we should be thinking about what can we do to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of mentally unstable people.” The two things, Carson added, “are not incompatible.”
I reckon a 14-year-old trying to stab someone over the choice of radio stations is mentally unstable. I’d also like to bring-up the wider point raised by this example: what if someone is charged, tried and convicted of attempted murder serves his time, turns his or her life around, and wants to keep and bear arms?
In light of his own background of criminal violence, what’s Ben Carson’s postion on restoring convicted criminals’ gun rights? Now that would be a ‘volatile’ discussion . . .
Carson also told Glen Beck that urban dwellers have no right to own semi automatic weapons.
This a recent interview or before he tried to publicly say that he now respects the constitution?
I think he started the whole “different rights for different cities” meme (that JEB has picked up and run with) back in 2011 or 2012.
Carson has become wiser since then, either revising his opinion to meet the facts or by merely revising what he says and keeping his opinion. Maybe he’d favor a law to keep knives away from black teens?
Bush may have jumped the shark. (if not with this topic, with his constant claims that illegal aliens are the same as immigrants, which is really silly considering the fact his wife is an immigrant)
If Ben Carson can point to Iraq on a map, I’ll eat my hat.
Hell, if Ben Carson can point to Cuba on a map, I’ll eat my sock.
Ben Carson is a world-renowned brilliant neurosurgeon.
You are an unknown Internet denizen that hasn’t mastered differing between articles of clothing and edible foodstuffs.
You are doomed to a long, arduous meal. I hope you were intelligent enough to bring some ketchup.
I still prefer Cruz.
Sure Carson is a nice and intelligent guy, but I still would prefer someone who has proven their respect and regard for the constitution.
Plus after his 21 hour long attempt to stop obamacare was admirable.
Yeah I gotta think Cruz is hoping to stay positioned so that after reality hits, the establishment and the disgruntled republicans will realize that he is the best compromise for both republican camps.
As much as president Cruz would be cool if like him as Chief Justice or even Justice Cruz.
I prefer Cruz as well. He seems to have the best head on his shoulders all around.
*cough* Kim Davis *cough*
He is well funded, and acting strategically.
Carson has also said that semi-automatic firearms should be banned (for taxpayers) in cities and he wants to double down on the War on Drugs and spend billions more militarizing the police and ruining lives over victimless crimes.
I do sorta wonder how much of that is pandering to the ‘just say no’ class, or if he really thinks that somehow prohibition has ever worked anywhere. He’s not the worst candidate in the current R clown show, but he’s far too statist for my taste.
I’ve seen his comment where he said he wants to intensify the war on drugs. The war on drugs has been a huge failure and only an idiot would want to double down on it. I guess he doesn’t realize that the associated crime and violence would also intensify. Carson might be a nice guy, but he is in no way fit to be president.
Carson’s ignorance to social matters is disturbing.
The stupidity of being smart and all that. I liked him for a minute, until he showed himself. Same sort of statist nonsense as Bush…
How disappointing… I liked Carson until I learned more about him.
Statists gonna State – and while this particular Statist may have the best of intentions, he is nonetheless a Statist, and he shall nonetheless State.
Who here has been 100% emotionally together their entire life? Maybe some. I was a bit of a “hot head” when I was young. Angry about a bunch of stuff that I had no choice in.
Wouldn’t allow myself to own a firearm, because I recognized that. Through decades of internal work I got in touch with why, dealt with it and became a much more stable and peaceful person. (Pretty boring now, actually.) Only then did I allow myself the pleasure of owning and collecting firearms.
I don’t think Ben’s story is that unusual and if you had to have a perfect record with no difficult learning experiences through your entire life, to be put in positions of responsibility, then the world would be run by liars that can convince people they have been perfect all their lives.
Oh wait….
“Not that unusual”. Stabbing someone over a disagreement about a radio station? Hitting people with bricks, rocks and baseball bats? We are talking about behaviors that could severely injure or kill someone.
Maybe if you hang out with criminals, thugs and druggies. But for the vast majority of the population, this type of behavior is not the norm.
You obviously don’t know how critical and culturally significant radio was in the early 70s. I mean the contests alone were a major focus of life. We got really good at dialing really fast to win crappy plastic sound amplifying headphones. Not to mention waiting all day to here that one song and then missing all but the last 20 seconds. It would drive you MAD I tell you!
🙂
Ok, maybe he was a little over the top. I wasn’t quite aware of the depth of his youthful depravity. Maybe I should read more better?
“More better”. That’s funny! A sense of humor is important!
Not my first choice, but I’ll be happy to cast a vote for him over Hildebeest.
I’m not sure I agree. We got a majority in Congress, and in many state-houses in direct response to Obama’s antics.
I’d rather have an anti-gun looney in the office who will alienate the American people, than a ‘conservative’ FUDD who will divide the gun-owner community from within.
Keep the lines clear – Carson are you for freedom or against it? No more of this “I believe in the 2nd Amendment, BUT…”
Intensify the War on Drugs? Yeeeaaah, no.
Carson is by no means my first choice, but in his defense, 14, male, and aggressive (I guess called emotionally unstable is the proper term these days) in not only not out of the ordinary,… it is the ordinary!
Plus, I don’t think anyone is advocating handing out unsupervised firearms to every 14 year old (nothing against the many 14 year olds that are capable of safely handling firearms).
Aren’t the Seventh-Day Adventists what’s left of a 19th century doomsday cult after the doomsday didn’t come as predicted by the cult founder?
I believe that you’re thinking of Jehovah Witnesses.
No, they, I think, never had a specific date (range) like the Millerites from which the SDAs came did.
They believed the end of days would come before the generation born in 1914 passed away. Until they passed away and nothing happened. To fix that they redefined “generation”.
I don’t trust anybody who actually believes the Earth is ~6000 years old. That in itself shows mental instability.
Well, lots of people trust him to operate on their brain, and that works out pretty well. I actually knew a guy who had constant seizures before he was five. Carson performed a new operation on him, saving his life. He’s an intelligent man, and his belief is based in his religious beliefs. No need to disparage his belief, no matter how outlandish it seems to you, especially since it doesn’t really have much bearing on anything.
I would say his religious beliefs are very relevant as they likely form the core of his principles.
It is unfortunate that so many people seem to believe that if you do not share their religious beliefs you cannot possibly have principles, or that if you DO share their religious beliefs you must of course share their principles. Tortured logic.
The suggestion that “morals and values” come from some particular religion has always been one of the laughable tropes out there. Not just because humans have always been humans and the values are evolutionary, but all violence done in the name of “god” since some con-man cooked up a religion.
It does not seem likely that one can sit through lectures on morality every week (or more) for a lifetime and not internalize some of what what being advocated.
Hey Cliff H and 16V, you guys sound like you’ve got an anger issue here! I’m not sure you should be allowed to own weapons! Yes, sarcasm, as always has an element of truth.
Nick,
If you had a working knowledge of Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Biology, Geology, Earth Science, Sociology, and Psychology, you would realize that anyone who believes Earth and the universe are billions of years old is deranged.
The problem is, very few people have a working knowledge of all those subjects … which is necessary to see through the obfuscation in the “theory” that Earth and the universe are billions of years old.
They aren’t deranged, and they do know and understand chemistry, biology, geology, etc. It simply is that they have been told that God made the Earth with the appearance of age, so when the Earth was created six thousand years ago (or whatever), God made it so it looks like those dinosaurs were running around 100-500 million years ago.
They don’t ignore scientific principles, and they are great going forward applying those principles in a scientific setting, but they don’t believe in things that predate the Bible.
Really, though, people like that are a small percentage of Christians, and they haven’t threatened to chop my head off, so I don’t mind them.
And if you really had a deep under standing of physics, chemistry, biology, and geology, you would really wonder why God created radioactive isotopes that decay at a specific rate as a joke to mislead people into thinking a 6000 year old universe was really,really, really old.
“…and they haven’t threatened to chop my head off, so I don’t mind them.”
One of my favorite things about Christianity.
Adub,
Neither the Earth nor the universe was created with the appearance of age. Rather, certain people need the universe to be billions of years old in order to push their “everything happens by random chance and anything is possible if the universe is old enough” deception.
Here are some GIANT gaping holes in the “universe is billions of years old” position:
(1) The only source of heavy elements in our universe is stars. Stars create heavier and heavier elements in their cores and eventually go supernova and eject those heavy elements in all directions at relativistic velocities. And yet there was a nice “cloud” of heavy elements suspended in space that slowly coalesced and formed the planets in our solar system. How those heavy elements went from traveling in all directions away from each other at relativistic velocity to being gently suspended in a giant dense cloud doesn’t make any sense. But you must believe this in order to believe that our solar systems and planets formed themselves billions of years ago.
(2) The moon must have several feet — if not several hundred feet — of dust on its surface if it is billions of years old. This was so certain that NASA expected the first lunar landers to disappear into the dust. Of course we know that there is an inch or so of dust on the moon. How we go from a requirement that billions of years of micro-meteors must create several feet of dust to seeing less than an inch of dust doesn’t make any sense. But you must believe that the moon is billions of years old anyway.
(3) Scientists recently examined a core sample from a dinosaur bone that is supposed to be several hundred million years old. They wanted to examine more detail in the bone marrow so they soaked a piece of the petrified bone marrow in a weak acid solution for something like one day to remove some of the minerals. The acid removed the minerals and the scientist observed soft tissue. Soft tissue does not last for several hundred million years. But we must believe that it does because that dinosaur must be several hundred million years old in order to uphold the “Earth is billions of years old” deceit. Of course, rather than admit that the dinosaur could not possibly be more than a few thousand years old, scientists are now trying to characterize a process that can preserve soft tissue for several hundred million years.
There are countless examples like this where you can see through the deceit if you have enough knowledge and are willing to go wherever the truth takes you.
“This was so certain that NASA expected the first lunar landers to disappear into the dust. Of course we know that there is an inch or so of dust on the moon. How we go from a requirement that billions of years of micro-meteors must create several feet of dust to seeing less than an inch of dust doesn’t make any sense.”
Billions of years (that’s thousands of millions of years, BTW) of the vibration and shock of all that material hitting the surface at tens of thousands of miles an hour tightly compacts the lunar soil.
You can see this effect if you’ve ever used a plate vibrator:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOkHLH9IL3c
Another factor is the concept of contact welding, which happens under hard vacuum.
You have to realize that the lunar soil under a microscope looks *nothing* like dust and sand on earth. The winds of our atmosphere blowing and liquid water moving tends to knock the sharp edges off fairly quickly of rock and glass particles. Those tiny pieces are called ‘clays’ or ‘fines’.
In effect, turning them into crude ball-bearings.
On the moon, it’s a mixture of jagged sharp edges and some roundish ‘beads’ of glass – minerals. Brutally abrasive stuff. Its going to cause real problems with door seals on eventually lunar habitats.
This is what lunar soil looks like under a microscope:
http://minerva.union.edu/hollochk/c_petrology/moon_rocks/sample_disk.htm
and:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/22apr_dontinhale/
Oh, and planets never coalesced out of nice ‘clouds’ of materials, the speed that stuff moves at in a vacuum makes the process quite violent and chaotic.
When stars go ‘Boom’, the elements are hauling ass until they whack *hard* into other matter.
uncommon_sense, you’re usually not this irrational…
Geoff, They have their pseudo-science and a even creationist museum. They have no understanding that their ‘religion’ is just one of the regional re-writes of Mazdaism, or that the KJ version of the Bible was pretty much written from scratch. You can show them overwhelming evidence of scientific fact, they’ll claim “faith” and stick their fingers in their ears like 2 year olds. (One of my faves was the ‘proof’, complete with math and everything, that we couldn’t be more than 6000 years old because between the animals and humans we would have ‘consumed’ all the water – because you know, once you drink water, it’s just gone)
They can’t wrap their heads around how big that boat would have to be to harbor even a few thousand of ‘god’s creatures’ let alone all of them. Not to mention the ones on other continents. They need a myth, they need a magical sky-daddy. Fortunately, lately they’ve been rather tame and not following all the admonitions in the Bible to go out and kill us non-believers. The ones I know quietly admit it’s all a social construct, and have a vague belief that there “might” be some higher power. The rest they know to be theater. Let’s hope it stays that way.
@ 16V –
“Geoff, They have their pseudo-science and a even creationist museum.”
Oh, yeah. Frankly, I find the 6,000 year-old Earth crowd more than a little embarrassing.
They will *never* be dissuaded from their beliefs. For the most part, I try to not deliberately antagonize them in the interest of being civil.
Kinda like the analogy of pig mud wrestling.
You’re right, some folks will just never accept demonstrable, repeatable proof. Science can be imperfect, we learn more, and some things can change. They’re want to be satisfied with the ‘certainty’ of “because magical sky-daddy” supposedly says so, or “faith!”. Most of us would like to imagine there is some sort of ‘afterlife’, but we are honest and know that it just doesn’t exist.
As long as they do no harm, I’ve gotten older and learned not to care too much. They’re free to be whatever they want, as long as they stay the hell outta my life. And quit molesting kids as an institution. Believe in astrology for all I care. When they try to put that crap in school books, deny marriage licenses, whatever, then I channel my inner Hitchens. The FFs were at most generous “deists” (except Jay, he actually believed) who used “god” to give a touchstone to the uneducated masses about where their inalienable human rights sprang from.
I summon the wisdom of Carlin (“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”) , and factor in the Dunning-Kruger effect when I see people trotting off to the creationist “museum”. Or arguing pseudo-science.
No matter how much I lecture my dog about computation fluid dynamics…
Geoff PR,
I had Science and Mathematics before faith. Science and Mathematics actually led me to faith. Look at your comment
First of all, Science did indeed teach that planets coalesced out of nice clouds of material — a necessary element for “accretion disks”. More importantly, present claims of the Big Bang, Cosmology, and life cycle of stars (including supernovae) directly argue against a cloud of heavy elements and accretion disks. Furthermore, not only does your own statement argue against clouds of heavy elements and accretion disks, it argues against the notion that heavy elements ejected from supernovae could form planets at all.
For starters, space is a vacuum. What matter would these supernovae chunks collide with? More specifically, to say that chunks of material traveling several light years will manage to hit another chunk of material — and do it often enough to accumulate enough mass to form planets — is beyond rational given the distances involved. Finally, when two chunks of heavy elements collide at relativistic velocities (e.g. travelling at over 1,000 miles per second), how could the resulting collision produce anything beyond pulverization and those resulting particles travelling in yet different directions at incredible velocities?
You have to remember, when material from a supernova has travelled 1,000 light years — that is 5,865 trillion miles — from the source star, particles would be spaced billions of miles apart. Given that our inner solar system (planets comprised of heavy elements) is only about 400 million miles in diameter, there just would not be any density of material to form anything, much less several planets.
Science and Mathematics tell me that our inner solar system cannot exist. And yet it obviously does. And not only does it exist, it exists in a way that is just right for life. Beyond our solar system, Physics itself is just right for the stable existence of energy and matter — including the fabric of space/time itself. Dozens/hundreds of coefficients/constants in Physics, Chemistry, etc. are all just right.
Everywhere you look, everything is just right for the stable existence of life on Earth. You could argue against Mathematics that the quite literally infinite number of factors necessary for the existence of the Earth and life happened to be just right by random chance. And then you are arguing for a solution that Mathematics tells us, with absolute certainty, is impossible.
BTW, the heaviest elements were formed via supernova.
Take just a cloud of Hydrogen in space. It collapses onto itself via its gravity.
The more of it that gathers in the protostar the stronger the gravity gets it effectively ‘vacuums’ up more Hydrogen and whatever matter is around it. The more that piles on heats it’s core. This continues until enough physical pressure pushes Hydrogen nuclei together creating Helium and heat.
The star ignites. Helium fuses to Carbon. Up the periodic table it goes until Iron is formed.
Iron is the end of the line. The star detonates into a Supernova.
A whole lotta energy is released in the Supernova. So much energy is released it gets brighter than the galaxy it’s in. Brighter than the combined hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy. The lighter elements are whacked together so hard the heavier elements are formed.
We’ve demonstrated this in particle accelerators here on earth, ‘creating’ elements.
There are *no*gaping holes in the creation of elements heavier than iron.
Geoff PR,
Fantastic. Now take the contents (which includes heavy elements) of the core of that star that went supernova and launch them in all directions at relativistic velocities. Tell me how much material you will have in an area the size of our solar system once that material is several hundred light years away from the source star. Tell me how material from other stars that went supernova will, while traveling at random directions at relativistic velocities, form a cloud of heavy elements with the content from other supernovae. Remember, all of the material in this cloud has to be fairly stationary in order for it to coalesce and condense down on itself in an “accretion disk” to form planets.
And after you get past that hurdle, please explain why there was only hydrogen in the middle of our solar system’s “accretion disk” (to make the sun), why there were only heavy elements in the region of the inner rocky planets, and why there was only gas in the outer region of the gas giant planets.
Does be actually believe the earth is only 6000yo? Do you have a link to that hilarity?
It’s like the GOP candidates were hand-picked by the DNC.
Currently their is not a candidate, dem or repub, I want spending their days walking around with their thumb on the nuclear trigger.
A nuclear attack is probably the least damaging thing these clowns could do. I’m far more worried about what they’ll do with a pen and a phone.
there. Warding off grammar nazi. ?
We all did stupid, criminal acts at 14 but we weren’t caught and grew out of it. I went on to be a prosecutor and Ben Carson went on to be a neurosurgeon. 99% of all adult males follow this pattern to some degree.
Absolutely true, but Carson needs more grooming, like city council of a small town.
I’d be fine with Carson as VP, if necessary.
“[A]s a teenager, I would go after people with rocks, and bricks, and baseball bats, and hammers.”
So did I, and I turned out okay. I’m thinking that the world’s finest pediatric neurosurgeon, who saved more children’s lives than anyone since Jonas Salk, has nothing to apologize for.
Other than wanting to ban semis in cities, complaining about having to “pander” to the NRA, and generally not having a Fkin clue what he’s talking about, I am inclined to agree with you.
I never got the impression that Carson is working from the Constitution as first principles, more as a “nice to have if you can” principles. He strikes me as a pragmatist working from his gut feelings. I don’t think he has ever really studied how government is supposed to work. Same goes for Trump.
I do not trust Carson or Trump due to their erratic past stance on the 2nd Amendment. Cruz and Paul at least were consistent. Jeb!, I do not trust at all.
Wouldnt it be alot easier for everybody with a brain to just support Ted Cruz?
Yep-TED is the man. The good doctor seems like a nice guy,separated twins,operated on brains and more. So what? Vote for ME-I didn’t formulate my stances last night. Why do I want a nervous novice outsider to be our chief exec? He changes his opinions quicker than the Donald(which ain’t good). I’d still vote for him over any dem but haven’t we been down this path before(Carter and Barry)? And yes Seventh Day Adventism is a fringe group dominated by a certain woman’s writings named Ellen G. White. Personally I DO have problems with Christians who insist the world is 6(or 10)thousand years old.
Point of order, if he doesn’t think that he can be trusted with a handgun, why does he think that we can trust him with the NUCLEAR WEAPONS LAUNCH CODES.
He also wants to ramp up the drug war, because he basically believes that government should protect you from yourself. Plus, apparently the drug war apparently is only a complete abysmal failre because the right people weren’t in charge, as opposed to prohibition being ALWAYS DOOMED TO FAIL because it runs completely contrary is absolutely basic free-market economics.
That is an extremely good point.
I wholeheartedly believe this is a non-issue. Carson has to be a person of integrity and at some point we are all faced with the dilemma to trust or not.
Caron’s honesty beats Trump’s dishonesty any and every day!
Since we disagree on the Republican candidates, and, I assume, agree that all (both + 1) of the Democrat candidates suck, why do we have to bash Carson, Trump, Bush or any of them?
LET’S UNITE AND WIN IN 2016!
Give Marco Rubio a look over.
Consistant and professional.
Neither Carson nor Trump’s political fortunes will survive the first few actual state contests. So each man’s stance is largely moot. Carson’s money will dry up and he’ll drop out. Trump’s poll numbers will plunge and he’ll self-finance himself from the fringe, making more and more outlandish grasps at attention; desperately seeking relevance.
How many of us haven’t stabbed someone over their choice of music? Don’t be a racist, vote Ben Carson.
I would love it if the first 100 percent black US President was Ben Carson.
How fun it will be to deride the Carson haters as the true racists Democrats are.