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WASHINGTON (AP) --
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson suggests the Holocaust would have been "greatly diminished" if German Jews had been armed with guns.
Carson was asked Thursday by CNN's Wolf Blitzer about an excerpt from his book "A More Perfect Union," in which Carson links the disarming on German citizens with the killing of 6 million Jews by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
The retired neurosurgeon says "the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed."
The candidate says "there is a reason that these dictatorial people take the guns first."
Carson drew criticism earlier this week by calling for potential victims of mass shootings to rush the attacker.
WASHINGTON (AP) --
President Barack Obama is bringing words of comfort and sympathy to grieving families of victims of the shooting rampage in Roseburg, Oregon, muting his message about the need for new laws to stem gun violence as he visits an area where firearms are popular.
Obama will talk with family members Friday at the start of a four-day West Coast trip. Eight community college students and a teacher were killed before the gunman fatally shot himself in front of his victims after he was wounded by police.
Staunchly conservative Douglas County is bristling with gun owners who use their firearms for hunting, target shooting and self-protection. A commonly held opinion in the area is that the solution to mass killings is more people carrying guns, not fewer.
"The fact that the college didn't permit guards to carry guns, there was no one there to stop this man," said Craig Schlesinger, pastor at the Garden Valley Church.
Referring to potential protesters, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said: "Those individuals have nothing to fear. The fact is the president has made clear that the goal of his visit is to spend time with the families of those who are so deeply affected by this terrible tragedy."
In the wake of the shooting, a visibly angry Obama said that thoughts and prayers are no longer enough and that changes to the nation's gun laws are needed.
Some of the most poignant moments of Obama's presidency have occurred in his role as consoler-in-chief. He led the grieving in Charleston, South Carolina, in singing "Amazing Grace." He read the first names of the 20 elementary school students killed in Newtown, Connecticut, and asked how the nation can honestly say it's doing enough to keep its children safe from harm.
This time, the White House says, the meeting is private.
Obama was already scheduled to go to the West Coast trip when the shooting occurred, and the White House adjusted his schedule to include Roseburg.
The shooting has sparked new talk about gun violence, though history suggests that prospects for enacting legislation are highly unlikely. Republican lawmakers are talking about the need to take up legislation designed to improve mental health care. Democrats are pitching the formation of a special committee to investigate gun violence, similar to what the GOP-led House established to investigate Planned Parenthood and the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans.
"No proposal is going to stop every shooting, but we can come up with solutions that stop some tragedies," said Democratic Rep. Mike Thompson of California, the leader of the proposal for a special committee.
Earnest has cited requiring background checks for all firearms purchases at gun shows "as the kind of obvious thing that we believe that Congress should do."
PLEASANT HILL, S.C. (AP) --
A number of South Carolina residents near the coast are evacuating and others are piling up sandbags anew outside homes and businesses, bracing for more possible flooding even as the nation's Homeland Security chief is set later Friday to tour areas hit hard by recent heavy rains.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson planned to travel to Columbia and Charleston during the day Friday to meet with federal, state and local officials and see the recovery efforts firsthand from what South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has described as a 1,000-year rainstorm. While skies are clear again after past days of rain, residents along or near the coast are readying as rain-swollen rivers reach the sea.
And there may be more misery on the way for the state. A storm system will stall near the coast this weekend, bringing as much as an additional inch of rain to some areas, according to the National Weather Service. The heaviest rain is expected Saturday.
Members of the South Carolina National Guard, stationed at a fire station in the rural hamlet of Pleasant Hill about 30 minutes from Georgetown, were busy Thursday helping people get to shelters from areas still cut off by road flooding. In some areas, flooding is expected to worsen in coming days and Georgetown, which fronts a coastal bay fed by a series of rivers, is especially watchful.
Guardsmen Michael Sanders, 21, and Michael Dunmore, 19, manned a Light Medium Tactical Vehicle, a truck with high clearance and a sealed engine that can easily move through 4 feet of water. The back was covered with canvas and outfitted with seats for those being evacuated out of the areas still threatened by floodwaters. The two are among some 2,800 Guard members called up to help deal with the flooding.
An Associated Press reporter rode along while the truck easily forded several feet of water on a rural road to reach a man seeking shelter. No sooner had the man been dropped off where a bus would take him to Georgetown than the guardsmen, guided by a local fire lieutenant, drove to a nearby hamlet where a woman and three young children also needed to be ferried out.
"This is the most water I have ever seen," Sanders said. "There is water running across the roads and there is water in yards, some worse than the others."
Sanders was in Columbia, the hard-hit state capital, when he was called to the coast for disaster response work. He said it took 7 hours to drive from Columbia to Georgetown because of the flooding along the way. Normally, the stretch is a 2.5-hour drive.
"It's a unique situation. All we can do is the best we can," Dunmore said.
Some motorists honked in greeting and people standing by the road waved as the heavy truck wound down the back roads not far from the Black River.
There was no water immediately threatening the homes of the people evacuated on Thursday. But several homes were isolated because of road flooding in other areas - flooding that Haley warned could get worse.
The governor on Thursday urged those in low-lying areas near the coast to "strongly consider evacuating" before floodwaters sweeping down river reach those areas. "We have thousands of people that won't move. And we need to get them to move," she said. "They don't need to be sitting in flooded areas for 12 days."
Officials say there were no mandatory evacuations but people need to be alert.
"We want people to be hyper-vigilant," said South Carolina National Guard commander Maj. Gen. Robert Livingston, adding some had become "complacent" in recent days.
In Georgetown, where floodwaters ran a foot or more deep over the weekend, merchants were again placing sand bags by doors and on the sidewalk next to businesses.
In the state capitol of Columbia, work is still under way to repair the city's water system that serves 375,000 customers after that city was hit hard by the rains. A canal that serves as the main source of drinking water for about half those customers collapsed in two places following historic rainfall. Contractors built a rock dam to plug the holes while National Guard helicopters dropped giant sandbags into the rushing water.
Water from the canal feeds the reservoir at the city's water treatment plant. With the levels in the canal falling, pumps are helping get water from the canal into the reservoir.