The relative of a Sandy Hook victim voiced her outrage over comments made by Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson after the Oregon shooting.
Erica Lafferty’s mother, Dawn Hochsprung, was the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary and was shot and killed during the shooting. Lafferty spoke out after Carson said that kindergarten teachers should carry weapons in the classroom.
“Ben Carson’s comments are insensitive to anyone who has ever been personally affected by gun violence,” Lafferty said in a statement emailed to the Guardian. “Are gun extremists in this country so morally bankrupt that their solution to ending school shootings is asking kindergarten teachers to be trained in how to attack a gunman?”
“My mother was an elementary school principal, not a marine who signed up to be on the frontlines of a shootout,” she added.
Carson has made a number of controversial comments in the last two week: he said teachers should carry guns, would rally a classroom to stop a mass shooter, and defended leaving a sponge on a woman’s brain during surgery.
For more on this story, visit the Guardian “Sandy Hook victim’s daughter calls Ben Carson ‘insensitive’ for Oregon reaction”