On Wednesday evening, a rifle-toting gunman murdered 18 people and wounded at least 13 more in Lewiston, Maine, when he opened fire at two separate locations—a bowling alley, followed by a bar. A manhunt is still underway for 40-year-old suspect Robert Card, a trained firearms instructor with the U.S. Army Reserve who, just this summer, spent two weeks in a mental hospital after reporting that he was hearing voices and threatening to shoot up a military base.
While the other late-night talk show hosts stuck to poking fun at new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on Thursday night, Stephen Colbert took his rebuke of the Louisiana congressman to a whole other level.
“Now, we know the arguments,” Colbert said of the do-nothing response politicians generally have to tragedies such as this. “Some people are going to say this is a mental health issue. Others are going to say it’s a gun issue. But there’s no reason it can’t be both.”
I’m no gun expert or psychologist, but I am fairly certain mentally stable people don’t go round shooting up public places.
I am fairly certain the same could be said for someone experiencing a mental health crisis without access to firearms.
Exactly, you’re mentally stable until you’re not. And lot’s of things can trigger a crisis.
He was such a nice guy, who would have thought!
Just checked and it looks like people without guns are even less likely to do it
Most mass shooters are actually right wing nutjobs.
Take this one, he was part of a right-wing militia.
While he did have a metal issue, he also had access to far too many guns, and then continued access after threatening to go on a mass shooting. All because he was part of a “militia”.
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He’s full of shit there was nothing saying he was involved with any militia other than the national guard.
Are you referring to the US Army Reserve as a right-wing militia, or did he also belong to another organization?
An interview with a neighbor said it was a militia, in addition to his military status.
The entire family is apparently part of the Maine Militia movement. The Card family home is referred to as a “compound”.
Thank you. All of that is new information to me. I haven’t been following the story closely.
Hearsay
So you’re ok with taking guns away from mentally unstable people? Ok, good, now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s go one step further and require yearly mental health check ups for gun ownership.
Definitely one way of trying to . One question though, who’s going to pay for all that?
The mental health services are not going to be free and the gun owners certainly won’t be cool with paying it. The government definitely won’t pay for it…See, this is why I say I have no faith that the problem won’t be solved any time soon, if ever.
Too many hard and expensive choices to make that will prove massively unpopular with large parts of either side of the argument.
The gun lobby could pay for it! They’ve got 16 million a year to spare!
Too expensive! Says residents of the only developed nation where this is a regular occurance
Why would they go against their own self interests?
The Maine shooter received urgent mental healthcare. Then he killed 20 people with a legally purchased firearm.
If you genuinely believe that “universal healthcare with no waiting times, for free, to every man, woman and child in America, including people who don’t want help, that instantly cures them of complex mental health problems far beyond our current medical science and so completely they will never relapse for even a minute, all so we can indiscriminately sell them guns” is a reasonable position, by all means start building that system.
You can have your guns back when you’re done.
Are there any checks and balances so that mentally unstable people can’t get guns?
Involuntary commitment disqualifies a person from owning guns legally. It’s essentially never happens though.
I think he voluntarily checked himself in, that’s what someone said last night. I’m talking more about before they get a gun.
Personally, this is one of the reasons I keep my mental illness to myself. I don’t want to hurt anyone but myself (and that’s not all the time), but knowing I might lose the right forever makes me keep a lid on things, and honestly prevents me from reaching out for help when I’m feeling particularly sour.
Also, the paperwork you sign before your NICS background check asks if you’ve been committed, voluntary or involuntary.
Also, involuntarily commiting definitely happens, but usually it’s after a failed suicide attempt, and just nets you a 20-25k bill (with insurance) and having no way of going back to work for three days costing you your job. I’ve got two friends with that exact experience.
And that’s the other edge of the double edged sword. If you say, “people with known mental health problems lose certain rights, even temporarily,” some portion of people with those problems will just fight harder to keep them unknown, foregoing help in the process. It’s just like how when certain places pass laws prohibiting having sex when you know you have an STD, some people just stop getting checked so they don’t “know” they have an STD.
There’s basically nothing temporary to government. You generally have to fight to undo anything, even if the laws says it should.
And it bans them from owning gun virtually forever unless they can afford a good lawyer and all the legal fees youll need to do it.
They don’t, but for some reason half the country wants tk keep selling those people weapons.
I hear calls for things like Red Flag Laws from conservatives pretty often, actually.
Where’s the legislation? Dems would sign on in a heartbeat.
There isn’t any because Republicans focus on tax cuts for billionaires first. Everything else is just posturing.
Think about it. What federal legislation have Republicans proposed and passed since Bush? Tax cuts for billionaires. At least Bush mixed it up with some giveaways to the defense industry.
I don’t know about other places, but here in Indiana we have a statewide Red Flag law. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think of Indiana as much of a blue state.
Mentally stable people don’t own guns
That’s a super odd take. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to own guns. My grandfather was a farmer and they’re just standard tools on a farm.
Mentally stable people don’t own guns that are only good for killing as many humans as possible
If guns were not so prevalent… then this mentally unstable person wouldn’t be able to kill so many people in such a short amount of time. Even the fucking police ignored his hearing voices and mental clinic appointment.
Why is this so down voted? I’m seriously asking?
Are the people down voting disagreeing that mentally stable people generally don’t go around shooting up public spaces?
Edit: Jesus was just asking, down voting doesn’t help anyone who was confused as I was.
To everyone explaining the issue here thank you I get it now.
Because he’s arguing in bad faith. He’s removing blame from the ease of access to guns in a disingenuous, JAQing off way.
It really bugs me when people do stuff like that… I grew up in VT, where laws are lax, tons of people have guns, and nothing ever happens. Responsibly handled and in the hands of a stable person, guns can be pretty safe - but, if you remove either one of those things, they’re incredibly dangerous.
In light of that, I wouldn’t mind if access were restricted somewhat. I’m totally fine with my neighbor having a rifle to kill varmints on their property, but way less fine with folks like my paranoid uncle having a safe full of assault rifles and thousands of rounds of ammo in a densely populated suburb.
In the civilized world, you have to justify your need for a gun with the presence of the aforementioned varmints. No yard, no varmints, no gun.
No one needs a machine gun to hunt deer, and no one needs a handgun. Handguns are lousy for self defense (“buy a shotgun”, to quote the President). All they’re good for is killing humans and making gun shareholders richer.
And no gun is going to help you if the government comes for you either. The cops are coming with tear gas, body armor, and tanks, and most importantly there’s no amount of cops you can kill that will get them to leave you alone.
All of the justifiable bases for having a gun are solved with a double barrel shotgun. Even if you’re being mauled by a bear, if two rounds of buckshot don’t stop it, you weren’t gonna make it anyway.
License shotguns like cars and get rid of everything else. “Only criminals will have guns!” That’s what your shotgun is for. And if the criminals are getting locked up for having mobile armories, even better. We can replace the current prison population of black drug users with actual gangsters.
so gun ownership should only be allowed for people who own property?
Yes, and while we’re at it, yes to any other bad faith strawman argument you’ve got. GTFO with that bullshit.
Fuck that. We can talk about giving up our guns when the cops and government give up theirs
Amen to that.
Good luck fighting off Pentagon drones with your hobby weapon.
Maine and Vermont has similar gun ownership rates and death by gun statistics.
“nothing ever happens” until it happens. then it’s all “how could this have happened” 🤷♀️
you only need an air rifle for killing varmints, AR-15 is designed for killing people.
That statement came across as the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” argument that is used against gun control, saying that it makes no sense to restrict guns when it’s the person using the gun who decides to kill, and if that person is motivated enough they can do damage even without access to firearms, so why bother?
I don’t think that’s your point at all, but people always reflexively downvote over shit like that.
Gun ownership is a touchy issue to the US population in general. shrugs
Ease of access to firearms is a massive part of the problem, but saying that I will be downvoted even more. Add in the fact there are people having mental issues and breakdowns more than ever, and you can see why mass shootings are increasing.
Simply put, it’s not an issue that is going to be solved any time soon, if ever. It is a highly politicized issue, which you can tell by the ferocity of the responses I got to my flippant original comment.
For real, I feel like their comment was literally only about the mental stability of these shooters. That’s it. But people read into what isn’t there and assume it’s a bad faith argument against gun control.