Twenty-two reported killed and dozens more wounded, but those numbers may change.
Maine is considered one of the safest states to live in. But no one is safe in a country that allows people with mental heath issues to purchase weapons of war.
Boston Globe: Who are officials searching for? Robert Card, 40, of Bowdoin, has been identified by authorities as a person of interest in the shootings.
The Associated Press described Card as a firearms instructor believed to be in the Army Reserve and assigned to a training facility in Saco, Maine.
The numbers: Just five years ago, the country had never experienced 500 mass shootings in one year:
- 2018: 335 mass shootings
- 2019: 414 mass shootings
- 2020: 610 mass shootings
- 2021: 689 mass shootings
- 2022: 645 mass shootings
16 comments:
But no one is safe in a country that allows people with mental heath issues to purchase weapons of war.
Didn't he just get out of the government (military). Maybe that's where we need a weapons ban.
We need a government with the balls to do the right thing. Until then, and every thinking honest person knows what that is, this shit will continue.
And FJ. Joe Con, etc. you're just another trumper fanning the flames of idiocy. IOW you're part of the problem. Not part of the solution.
JoeCon:
"Didn't he just get out of the government (military). Maybe that's where we need a weapons ban."
Inanities abound. And we can always count on JoeCon/-FJ to write them.
Here's an idea: BAN AR-15s and the like. We did it before, and we can do it again.
The 2nd Amendment is not unrestricted.
No one is allowed to own machine guns, bazookas, rocket launchers, and flame throwers.
At least not yet in this insane, weapons-crazed country.
Maybe they should have just openned up a closer VA mental facility, or better, given veterans access to private mental health care. The military tends to be better at giving veterans PTSD rather than at curing it.
-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...
"Maybe they should have just openned up a closer VA mental facility, or better, given veterans access to private mental health care. The military tends to be better at giving veterans PTSD rather than at curing it."
Well then, how about we outlaw wars, starting with what's happening in Israel/Palestine?
No wars; no PTSD. Problem solved!
"Maybe they should have just openned up a closer VA mental facility, or better, given veterans access to private mental health care."
Nah. The MAGA House Republicans would only vote against that. They're a bunch of pro-authoritarian, anti-democracy veteran-hating goons.
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
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44m
New House Speaker Mike Johnson offers prayers in response to the latest horrible mass shooting. Can't believe nobody has thought of that before.
Notice how often people offer "thoughts and prayers," and how "thoughts and prayers" accomplish bupkis?
How about legislation? We passed legislation before that outlawed AR-15s and mass shootings plummeted!
So far, "thoughts and prayers" have only INCREASED mass shootings. I wonder why that is.
During the 1994-2004 ban:
In the years after the assault weapons ban went into effect, the number of deaths from mass shootings fell, and the increase in the annual number of incidents slowed down. Even including 1999’s Columbine High School massacre – the deadliest mass shooting during the period of the ban – the 1994 to 2004 period saw lower average annual rates of both mass shootings and deaths resulting from such incidents than before the ban’s inception.
From 2004 onward:
The data shows an almost immediate – and steep – rise in mass shooting deaths in the years after the assault weapons ban expired in 2004.
Breaking the data into absolute numbers, between 2004 and 2017 – the last year of our analysis – the average number of yearly deaths attributed to mass shootings was 25, compared with 5.3 during the 10-year tenure of the ban and 7.2 in the years leading up to the prohibition on assault weapons.
SOURCE
As per law enforcement reports, Card served as a firearms instructor in the US Army Reserve. He recently disclosed mental health issues, citing experiences of auditory hallucinations including hearing voices and threats to shoot up the National Guard Base in Saco, according to a Maine law enforcement bulletin seen by the Associated Press.
He was also committed to a mental health facility for two weeks during the summer of 2023. According to a report by Macra, Card has a history of arrests for domestic violence and other crimes.
So much for the efficacy of law enforcement in preventing shooting incidents... this guy checked ALL the "red/yellow flag" boxes and local LEO's did NOTHING.... Once again, government had all the tools needed to prevent this, but as usual did nothing. It was 'too much trouble."
Instead of charging the distraught man with a crime and taking him to the Penobscot County Jail, the sheriff’s office and district attorney used Maine’s new “yellow flag” law to take him into protective custody and cut off his access to dangerous weapons for a year so he could receive mental health treatment.
Police and prosecutors have used that new law at least a dozen times since it took effect on July 1, 2020, following its 2019 passage in the Maine Legislature. It allows police and prosecutors, with a medical professional’s assessment in hand, to seek a judge’s permission to confiscate guns and other weapons from people who pose a danger to themselves and others in hopes of preventing mass shootings and suicides.
It’s a more limited version of “red flag” laws in other states that allow family members and police to petition courts to confiscate guns and other dangerous weapons from people found to be dangerous.
Maine’s law has the potential to save lives, according to authorities. But using it is time-consuming and resource-intensive, as it involves police, district attorneys, defense attorneys, judges and medical professionals. It comes with no additional funding attached that would make it truly effective, they said. Plus, it hasn’t always succeeded in ensuring that people who need mental health treatment actually follow through with it, said a lawyer involved in a number of yellow flag cases.
It all adds up. Trump loosened gun regulations for mentally ill buyers, openly inviting mass murder.
And the psychotic shooter is also a deranged MAGAt.
Robert Card liked a post by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, that read, “President Biden has already caused record inflation. Now, his reckless refusal to negotiate could lead to a first-ever default. I am prepared to clear my calendar. Mr. President, what are you afraid of?”
Card also liked a post by conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza that read, “An assault weapons? Well, cars kill more people than guns do. But we blame the drivers. We don’t ban large or fast cars. We understand that cars, like guns, don’t act by themselves. The blame lies with the people who operate these mechanical devices. Common sense 101.”
Robert Card liked a post by a conservative page named Catturd that read,
"Good morning …When you don’t have the will of The People … you cheat, lie, fudge numbers, force lockdowns, illegally change election laws, run out of ink, make sure the voting machines don’t work in Republican areas only, hire 2000 mules, call voter ID racist, shut down counting on election night, do ballot dumps in the middle of the night which miraculously have 99% Democrat votes, have your propaganda communist media lie for you, count for weeks until you get your candidate to pull ahead then immediately shutdown counting, and arrest your political opponents to win."
Card and -FJ/JC share this indoctrinated delusional belief system.
Remember the radial Right's projection, "liberalism is a mental disorder"?
Not blaming the Republicans and NRA for these senseless deaths is the same as not blaming Fentanyl dealers for overdose victims.
THAT is truly a mental disorder.
A weapons ban would have certainly helped to prevent this from happening. If the overall number were 5 instead of 500, this mentally ill guy might not have thought to do this.
Here's how Alexandra Petri put it in a WAPO OpEd...
"The problem is the human heart. Gun violence is an unchangeable, immutable fact of the human condition. That is why it is localized so strongly to this country and this time period. This is not a problem with a solution. It is the price you pay for being human. This is not unique to the United States, although you see it only here. Maybe it’s something to do with the water. Not laws, though; as we know from our efforts to impose vicious lawsuits and increasingly draconian restrictions against anyone who seeks an abortion, it is pointless to legislate about a problem. Some things, you are just born with and must accept; guns are one of them."
-FJ said... "The military tends to be better at giving veterans PTSD rather than at curing it."
Amen to that.
Chronically underfunded and understaffed, the military health system as it relates to vets needs a major overhaul. Not just more money, new ideas, new systems and new facilities.
The problem is like a lot of our both hard and soft infrastructure, the foundations were laid in the high tax, big spending decade of the 1950's as America came out of the depression, WWII funk.
I doubt, regardless of need, we'll ever see another era like that in our country, even with the Civil Rights issues that decade was known for.
The 10 mass shootings since Lewiston...
Joe Conservative, your link takes me to a right wing web page, the article about the shooting so full of inuendo and racist dog whistles that my ears are still ringing.
NPR talked about multiple mass shootings over the weekend. Somehow, without a single racist or snide remark they were able to convey the news that at least 11 are dead and 76 injured this weekend.
See, it's not so hard to just report the news, is it?
Also - facts have a liberal bias, meaning facts don't care about ideology or religion which are both of concern to the MAGA crowd. Therefore the idea a media company which reports those facts is liberal in their business philosophy is adolescent thinking. I know you can't stop JC, just making a note.
Dave Miller - the military as a whole has failed their past five audits. Failed.
If there were just a thing as a civilian oversite committee to address these failures I'd break my vow of not volunteering to ask to serve.
There has to be a way to turn our military from automatic death machines to creating living solutions for our nation. I hope wiser minds than my own are already at work.
Every bit as biased and right wing as Joy B. is biased and left wing. If not more so.
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