Esteemed doctor Ben Carson told Fox & Friends that victims of shootings need to do more to fight back, saying that he would "not just stand there and let him shoot me."
"I would say, 'Hey guys, everybody attack him. He may shoot me, but he can’t get us all'" Carson said.
One man did follow Carson's advice. Survivors of the Oregon shooting say Christopher Mintz, a 30-year-old military veteran, charged directly at the shooter and tried to block the door.
Mintz, 30, was attempting to block the door of the classroom when he encountered the gunman, his aunt Wanda Mintz told The Washington Post. Her nephew was shot three times, then fell to the ground. In that moment, she said, he tried to reason with the gunman.
“He hit the ground and looked up at him and said, ‘It’s my son’s birthday, don’t do this,'” Wanda Mintz recounted, after speaking to the mother of Mintz’s son. “And the guy shot him at least two more times.”
While Mintz should be praised for his heroism, it didn't exactly work. The gunman entered the classroom and killed nearly a dozen people ranging in ages from 17 to 67, including one woman in a wheelchair.
Gun fetishists would undoubtedly respond to this by saying everyone in the classroom should have been armed.