Franklin Graham has condemned Barack Obama's response to the massacre at Umpqua Community College in Oregon last week, and defended the right to bear arms.
In an interview with Fox News, he said he couldn't understand why the president hasn't publicly mentioned that Christians were specifically targeted for their faith during the shooting. Gunman Chris Harper Mercer allegedly asked students "Are you a Christian?" before he shot them.
"This man is a mystery," Graham said of Obama. "It just baffles me that he will speak prior to getting all the facts."
Graham, however, went on to defend the Second Amendment which allows Americans to keep and bear arms. Obama has desperately tried to introduce tighter legislation on gun laws, but has so far failed to have it passed by Congress. "I wish the President, instead of trying to say we need to take away the guns...well, you can take away all the guns in the world, and stack them up in Central Park in New York and have a mountain of them – and not one gun is going to jump out of that stack and shoot you or hurt anybody. It takes a human being to pick up that gun," Graham said.
"And of course the first murder was with a club; if you don't have a gun there's gunna be a club, there's gunna be a knife, there's gunna be something. So I don't understand the President."
He added "Christians are martyred and we're seeing it not only in the Middle East but we're beginning to see it in the United States, and the President is silent."
Graham also addressed comments made by Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, who this week claimed that he would have confronted Haper Mercer had he been at the college during the massacre.
"I would not just stand there and let him shoot me," Carson said. I would say, 'Hey, guys, everybody attack him. He may shoot me, but he can't get us all.'"
"I hope I wouldn't just stand there, I hope I'd have maybe a split second to fight back, to maybe get the upper hand on the person who has a gun to my head, but you don't know," Franklin said of the comments.
"But I guess I agree with Ben Carson, there's a side of me that I think would want to fight back and take control of the situation."
