Ben Carson talks about President Obama's upcoming scheduled visit to Oregon. Carson slams Obama for Oregon visit with shooting victims' families

If he were president, Ben Carson would not visit Roseburg, Oregon, in the aftermath of last week's deadly shooting, as President Barack Obama is scheduled to do on Friday. The Republican presidential candidate also slammed Obama for his call on the same day of the shooting to politicize the event that killed nine people at Umpqua Community College, in hopes of finally getting momentum for gun control legislation.

“Imagine a politician politicizing something," Carson remarked during an interview with "Fox and Friends." When do we get to the point where we have people who actually want to solve our problems rather than just politicize everything? I think that’s what the American people are so sick and tired of."


A White House official said Monday that Obama would travel to Roseburg as part of his already-scheduled West Coast fundraising trip to meet privately with the families of the victims, as he has done in similar instances in the past, including in Charleston, South Carolina this year; in Aurora, Colorado in 2012; and in Newtown, Connecticut, also in 2012.

Asked what he would have done had a gunman walked up to him and asked him to state his religion, Carson said he would have been more aggressive.

"Not only would I probably not cooperate with him, I 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,'" he told the hosts.

His posts on Facebook and Twitter holding a sign proclaiming "#IAmAChristian" went viral over the weekend, in reference to some witness accounts that the gunman asked victims to stand up and identify themselves if they were Christian before they were shot, though police did not confirm or deny the accounts.