He was in an asylum and reported hearing voices. He’s a trained army vet and a gun instructor. And they let him keep his guns.
Fuck every single Republican.
It’s okay. The other voice inside his head is a good guy with a gun.
Hah. Fucking gold.
Also worth mentioning he threatened to shoot up the local National Guard base prior to this shooting.
SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED!
A bulletin put out by the Maine Information and Analysis Center, a database for law enforcement officials, said Card was a trained firearms instructor and was believed to be in the Army Reserve.
It added that law enforcement said Card “recently reported mental health issues to include hearing voices and threats to shoot up the National Guard Base in Saco, ME.”
The bulletin said Card was reported to have been committed to a mental health facility for two weeks this summer and then released. NBC News has not been able to independently verify the bulletin’s statements about Card’s history.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lewiston-maine-shooting-robert-card-what-know-rcna122262
The Gun Control Act (GCA), codified at 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), makes it unlawful for certain categories of persons to ship, transport, receive, or possess firearms or ammunition, to include any person:
who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution;
…
Let’s also remember that one of the first things Republicans did in 2017 was remove a check on people with mental health issues from purchasing firearms. Trump Signs Bill Revoking Obama-Era Gun Checks for People With Mental Illnesses (NBC News 27Feb2017)
The rule, which was finalized in December, added people receiving Social Security checks for mental illnesses and people deemed unfit to handle their own financial affairs to the national background check database.
I don’t think this guy would been in either category, but yes.
I think he ought to have been arrested when he threatened to shoot the National Guard facility.
Insane. This was 200% preventable
More and more Democrats are also gun lovers so fuck all gun people, get rid of all the guns and you get rid of the issue.
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Actually if you’re involuntarily committed you already lose your right to firearms (iirc there are steps to regain your rights, but they were not taken here). Red flag laws aren’t just bad from a “gun” standpoint, they’re bad because “innocent until proven guilty” gets thrown out the window and it becomes “guilty until you can prove you’re not crazy,” and proving the negative is always a more difficult position. It perverts our whole justice system, and while I have issues with other things doing the same thing (racism for example), adding more is imo not a good idea. I’d rather see them actually enforce the laws we already have which while more stringent than “my roomate seems unstable,” also would have prevented this. I mean the guy was commited (making him a prohibited purchaser) and displayed violent ideation to a degree that warrants keeping him for a little while, so they let him out, don’t take his current guns, and afaik fail to input his commital to NICs, that’s three things that already could and should have been done in this specific case red flag laws withstanding.
Gun restrictions aren’t enough though, the problem is people in general having access to guns.
If only we could restrict that somehow
Thing is when people talk about restrictions they mean “These people shouldn’t have guns, but these people should be allowed to have them.” What I’m saying is they should be banned altogether.
Yeah that is a pipe dream, in a country with more guns than people that is bordered on two sides by 2 foreign governments. It just seems unrealistic to say “Just ban all guns” that seems like a massive oversimplification of the problem. We don’t have some magical button that just deletes all guns in the borders of the US. Restrictions seem to be a realistic option but one would hope the left gets a bit of a better understanding of firearms since at the moment they mostly make laws about things they have very little understanding of and typically ban things based on how they appear rather than how they operate.
US guns make their way to Canada and Mexico, not the other way around, because it’s so hard to get them in these countries.
That’s not how restrictions work.
I don’t really buy that. I think it’s right-wing astroturfers trying to muddy the waters while gun lobbyists seek to tap into another market.
To be fair, Democrats generally want reasonable restrictions on guns, such as ones that would have prevented this person from owning them and more liberal ones would have supported mental health programs to help this person not reach this point, Republicans want neither.
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I’m in favor of mental health checks on an annual basis. Crazy people shouldn’t have access to guns. And you can bipartisan this all you want, the VAST majority of irresponsible gun owners are REPUBLICANS (or whatever center->right bullshit title they choose. LiBeRrRtaRrRiANz
They won’t address the mental health problems of this nation because it isn’t profitable to do so.
They won’t address the gun problem of this nation because of something a slaver jotted down 200+ years ago. And guns are profitable.
They won’t address mass shootings because then you wouldn’t be living in fear of them and would have time realize how they have ruined everything in the name of profits.
America is doomed for as long as we care about profit more than people
I would like to point out that Reagan dismantled funding for our mental health system and was responsible for the closing of many mental health treatment centers, and Republicans have (to my knowledge) voted against every effort to resurrect it.
They won’t support restrictions on gun ownership because they say the problem is mental health, but they won’t support spending on mental health either. (Most likely because they seem to oppose anything that would actually help people who suffer.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Systems_Act_of_1980
https://sociology.org/content/vol003.004/thomas.html
This last one is a ddg search - you can just pick which article you want to read about Republicans voting against mental health funding.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=republicans+vote+against+mental+health+funding
The Republican party really is a hollow shell occupied only by those willing to distract and harm the people rather than help them.
That’s the politicians and donors at least. They also have a lot of useful idiots.
They won’t address the mental health problems because it’s all part of a strategy to keep people scared.
Also for hospital systems it’s wildly unprofitable. You make your money in two places in medicine, elective surgeries and in the emergency department. Mental healthcare is slow, in the extreme cases you’re dealing with unpleasant patients that are hostile to the care you’re trying to provide, and you often have to house them and feed them for extended periods of time knowing they don’t have any money to reimburse you.
That’s why the hospital I’m working at has built a multimillion dollar cardiac surgery tower (not a unit, not a few floors, an entire tower), but scrapped the plans to rebuild the aging and woefully inadequate inpatient psych facility.
If we can’t squeeze every cent from you we will only do the bare minimum that the CMC requires from us.
Making healthcare a for profit endeavour is not in the best interests of society as a whole.
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Capitalism should exist for non essentials only. I don’t care that candy factories and stores aren’t controlled by the government/its workers, but I sure as hell care that my government is trying to introduce more and more private care facilities in our healthcare system!
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Because one is realistic (a system where essential needs are all nationalised but non essentials aren’t, giving a place for greedy people who feel that need to make profit through their work) and the other isn’t (expecting greed to disappear).
You could adress it, but it wont save the problem. Look at europe, we ban guns, we dont shoot people every day. We still have mental health problems.
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America is doomed for as long as we care about profit more than people
Sorry to break this to you but that’s the literal back bone of your country lol. Slaves much? You still have slavery to this day!
Not actual slavery – you can always quit your job and starve to death under a freeway overpass.
But I think a lot of corporate America would love actual slavery. Look at the way Amazon treats warehouse workers.
I believe they mean the incarcerated. They can be used legally as slaves.
No, slavery is baked into your constitution, and allows the use of slave labor. To this day. Literally. The 13th amendment. Actual slavery.
It’s almost like guns aren’t a good idea 🤔🤔🤔
Edit:
CNN that Card is a certified firearms instructor and a member of the US Army Reserve.
Yup sounds about right
Another Trump-loving America First terrorist.
His “liked” tweets include content published by Donald Trump Jnr., Tucker Carlson and Dinesh D’Souza. He also liked tweets by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan, according to the screenshots.
Yup, but color me completely unsurprised like you because — guess what — the vast majority of all politically-motivated acts of violence including murders come from the right-wing side of the political spectrum. This isn’t even a recent phenomenon; this extends throughout our history.
So don’t tell anyone it’s a BoTh SiDeS thing. These people are mentally-ill and so damn gullible when it comes to misinformation. They generally lack education and critical-thinking skills to distinguish truth from fiction. They are generally in positions of low self-esteem (e.g., incels) or socioeconomically struggling and thus they feel vindicated when they can believe in something bigger than themselves — or especially to blame someone other than themselves.
I heard they go by “America First” because it describes their terrorism hit list.
Felt like it had been a while since I read about a mass shooting in the USA.
Just because they don’t report shootings under ten kills anymore does not mean they don’t happen. But mass shootings, i.e. incidents where four or more people are killed) are still daily occurances in the US.
That definition is so ridiculous. Shoot 100 without killing a single one? That wasn’t a mass shooting.
I would say that’s a mass shooting, just not a mass killing
Yeah, but for media and the US government it isn’t 🤷
It also doesn’t happen. Because guns are so good at killing so easily. They should all be banned.
Now that would be newsworthy for being the most inept American gun owner.
Just because they don’t report shootings under ten kills anymore does not mean they don’t happen.
I never said or implied otherwise?
The last one was August 26th according to this wikipedia list, which is 60 days ago. But there were 2 in August 3 days apart, so… I guess it has been a while by comparison.
But only if you don’t look at this other list on Wikipedia. This list has only 1 of a chosen set of sources who referred to it as a mass killing, the other lists mass killings where 2+ of their sources called it a mass killing. I wonder how long the 3+ sources list will be before it gets it own fork.
I remember a time when each would be the center of news for at least a week.
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Yep. I got real suspicious when the first list said August, which is when I noticed it said that I should also look at the “more comprehensive” list. I opened that up and thought “yeah, yesterday, that sounds about right”.
We only hear about the big ones these days.
Yeah it’s been like a month at least.
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The endless loop of people dying from mass shootings and nothing changes until people in power’s family and children are effected. This is just terrible.
jesus christ. i mean, imagine going bowling and seeing this
what a country
Thoughts and prayers.
Am I doing it right?
Yep. It’s all better now.
If anyone needs a recap on why guns laws are nearly impossible to enforce look no further than NYSRPA v. Bruen. Vox just wrote a pretty decent recap that is worth reading. https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/10/24/23914235/supreme-court-domestic-violence-abusers-gun-policy-us-rahimi
Funny, though, that gun laws work everywhere else on the globe, just not in the US where the don’t even try.
Oh yes, please explain to me how the US would go about changing the 2nd amendment right now given how the legal mechanisms for doing so work. It’s basically impossible at the moment.
As if that was a new issue. The 2nd should have been repelled after the first mass shooting happened.
An amendment may be proposed by a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress, or, if two-thirds of the States request one, by a convention called for that purpose. The amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths of the State legislatures, or three-fourths of conventions called in each State for ratification.
Altering the constitution is an extremely tall order in today’s US politics. It hasn’t been done successfully in over 30 years and the one prior to that was over 50 years ago.
The Republicans can barely even vote in a house speaker right now when they have the required majority to do so. Good luck getting a change to the 2nd amendment through. It’s just not going to happen.
Hence what I said, that should have been taken care of decades ago.
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Well nothing you’re saying is going to happen. So again, feel free to explain to me how – realistically – people are going to manage to change the 2nd amendment.
Bonus points for doing it without name calling this time.
To give you an actual answer, interpreting the 2nd Amendment as granting an essentially unrestricted right to firearm ownership to all Americans is a very recent concept, only being solidly established in 2008 in the SCOTUS case of DC v. Heller, which struck down a firearms regulation law dating from 1975. Justice Stevens called it “unquestionably the most clearly incorrect decision that the Supreme Court announced during my tenure on the bench”, and suggested that a constitutional amendment should be enacted to explicitly overturn it.
That, and Republicans have clearly established that precedent means essentially nothing now, so appointing a SCOTUS majority that favors some amount of gun regulation is also a completely valid path forward, and probably more reasonable than an amendment.
So, the realistic option is to keep Republicans out of the presidency for a good decade or so. It’s not fast, but Republicans persisted for nearly 50 years to overturn Roe v. Wade. It’s doable.
Yeah I would agree that basically packing the court or waiting out more retirements from right wing judges is about the only realistic path forward, and like you’re saying that could take decades.
People in these kinds of discussions being like “WHY CAN’T WE CHANGE THIS OVERNIGHT?” really ought to better inform themselves of how this stuff works. It’s not that simple.
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Sure, none of it is real and we can change it. The problem is that “we” includes all the other people, and what is “real to us” is what we make of it.
If the people collectively decide to abide by our current system of government, laws, and voting in order to not rock the boat, then trying to forcefully change that gets you labeled a terrorist or a criminal.
But if enough people agree with you, then it starts getting closer to being a new thing.
Wait, so your plan is for the people without guns to use guns to stand up to the people who want/own guns and the US gov, all to ban guns?
Laws aren’t real, but the time you will end up spending in jail will sure feel real.
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Are you real?
Yeah, we have a ton of trouble with them in Europe.
Every other developed country in the world can do it, but yeah, totally impossible.
Gun ownership is almost totally unregulated in Maine.
Tots and pears
Way to go conservatives! Take a bow. Wow… what is that now? How many hundreds/thousands of people have died because of your silence when it comes to the common sense gun laws you refuse to support?
At this post- one is left to only assume that you’re going for some kind of record in deaths on your hands, so….
Congratulations.
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Oof
