We’ve seen all of this play out before. An individual who police had previously investigated after reports of disturbing behavior goes on to commit a horrible crime. Before the bodies cold, the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex and gun-hating politicians claim the problem is — of course — the guns and the crime is just the latest evidence that we need more laws that further restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
We’ve seen so-called “known wolf” shooters before. People who had come to the attention of police or other authorities. Last year, it was the piece of human detritus who shot up a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs. The shooter there had made a bomb threat and was charged with felony kidnapping, but still wasn’t behind bars.
The most current chapter in this never-ending story is that of Robert Card, the Lewiston, Maine spree killer. He’d been committed in an Army hospital over the summer due to disturbing behavior and threats he’d made to shoot up his National Guard base.
Now, as CNN reports, the Maine National Guard were worried enough about Card’s behavior in September that they alerted local law enforcement.
The Maine National Guard asked local police to check on the reservist who killed 18 people after a soldier became concerned he would “snap and commit a mass shooting,” according to information shared with CNN.
Officers from the Sagadahoc County and Kennebec County Sheriff’s Offices responded and tried to contact Robert Card on September 16, less than six weeks before Wednesday’s massacres in a bowling alley and a bar, documents say, according to a law enforcement source.
More . . .
An Army spokesperson told CNN Card’s unit had requested a health and welfare check from the sheriff’s office.
“In September, the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s office responded to a health and welfare check requested by Sgt. 1st Class Robert Card’s unit out of an abundance of caution after the unit became concerned for his safety,” Lt. Col. Ruth Castro said. “The Army takes all allegations seriously. Due to an ongoing Army investigation, we cannot go into any further details.”
But police didn’t talk to him.
When the Sagadahoc and Kennebec officers were deployed to his home on September 16, they did not make contact with the shooter but soon learned of his mental health problems and his guns, the law enforcement source told CNN.
The reservist would not answer the door to officers, the source said, so officers started to make calls to those who knew him.
The unit commander told one officer that the man no longer had any Guard weapons and arrangements had been made with his brother who had retrieved his personal firearms.
The commander also reportedly told the officer that he thought it best to let the man have time to himself.
The following day, the Sagadahoc officer spoke with the shooter’s brother, who warned him that the man would likely be armed if he did answer the door.
“I was later contacted by [the brother,] he told me that between him and his father they would work to ensure that [the man] does not have access to any firearms. They have a way to secure his weapons,” the source quoted from a welfare check report.
That obviously didn’t happen.
Maine has something called a yellow flag law that requires police to have an individual examined by a medical professional before they can petition a court to confiscate his firearms. If these media reports are accurate, they apparently made no attempt to do that.
A File 6 missing person’s report appears to have been generated by the Sagadahoc sergeant who tried to check on the man, the source told CNN, but it is unclear if there was any action in regard to the shooter’s access to weapons. The source said the case appeared to have been closed on October 1, 24 days before the massacres.
Meanwhile, the anti-gun furies were going full-bore against gun rights long before the bodies cooled and continue still. The fact that nothing was done about a man who had made numerous threats and alarmed the Army enough to ask for a wellness check was, of course, totally disregarded.
Brady president Kris Brown looked at what happened in Maine and decided that the real culprit here is…Ruger.
For those of you who still wear a mask when you’re driving alone in your car, Ruger makes legal products that they sell through highly regulated channels to individuals who have passed a federal background check. So despite Brown’s desperate attempt to use the Maine murders to advance her cause and justify her salary, it isn’t really clear why she thinks Ruger needs to be “held accountable” for anything.
Authorities report that the Maine killer bought his guns legally. And when he answered questions truthfully about his mental health history, a local dealer refused to sell him a suppressor.
Nearly three months before Wednesday’s shootings, Card tried to buy a firearm silencer from Coastal Defense Firearms in Auburn, Maine, but the owner of the store, Rick LaChapelle, refused to let Card complete the purchase after he disclosed on a form that he had mental health issues, The New York Times reported.
In other words, whatever you think about our current system of firearm regulation, when the laws that are currently on the books now are applied, they tend to work.
That, however, isn’t the case. And when those balls are dropped, they have resulted in a a lot of dead bodies. There have been a number of instances of significant, high profile systemic failures that led directly to some of the most notorious shootings in America. Charleston, Sutherland Springs, and Colorado Springs come immediately to mind. The Virginia Tech killer also freaked people out enough to raise alarms and these aren’t the only ones.
In other words, we have thousands of gun control laws already on the books. Enacting more won’t change the fact that bureaucracies are big, dumb, plodding and cumbersome. So are a lot of the people who work under them. The only thing additional laws will do is disarm more law-abiding people and make future crazed killers’ jobs easier.
It’s hard to conceive of someone who had raised more (ahem) red flags than Robert Card did. And yet nothing was done to either prosecute him for the arguably terroristic threats he’d made or to use laws already on the books to relieve him of his guns until he could get the mental health care he so clearly needed.
None of that, of course, will prevent the Kris Browns, Shannon Watts and Chris Murphys of the world from overlooking all of the failures in the system they’ve helped to build that allowed the Lewiston shooting to happen. And they they shamelessly use it — as have many others — to justify their constant efforts to limit Americans’ gun rights.
If I ever wondered why the blood dancers always push for immediate action I am always reminded that as more information comes out their solutions are less relevant to the issues at play.
yeah, calls for things like universal background checks are pointless if they bought them through the normal legal channels… the rushed “solutions” are usually the same old list, with the caveat “yeah it wouldn’t have prevented this one but I am sure it would save some in the future! And if it saves just one life…”
When more information comes out showing how these laws and the system failed, then those same people double down on the it was the guns fault, the gun manufactures fault, or from the latest stupid from David Hogg, it is the fault of white suburban women who vote Republican. He never says it is the fault of soft on crime DAs, no cash bail, or people who vote for Democrats that have the same failed policies.
No. It is white suburban women.
” soft on crime DAs, no cash bail, or people who vote for Democrats ”
^^^almost a synonym for white urban females, ironically enough.
It all circles back to self defense and law abiding citizens needing to be better armed than the perp or worse…perps. Failure to be armed and vigilant leaves you and yours at the mercy of criminals who can surprise people when they least expect it…guaranteed.
And our idiot politicians in Maine like Golden & Pingree think magazine capacity is the problem. We’ve got more professional retards in Maine than San Fransicko does.
My read of MSM’s immediate template for covering this most recent betrayal is – “He bought the gun legally” front and center, on a background of “Maine’s relaxed gun laws”.
Absolutely no mention of “gunfree zone”, not even a whisper…
nor of the abject failure of the very ones tasked with “keeping us safe” (which is NEVER their job anyway, that’s MY job) to actually DO so.
I had heard “questions were raised” about this guy’s mental condition. I am shocked and outraged at the clear and specific details of the request for action from local LE to check this guy out, but who sat on their collective thick ends and did.. NOTHONG meaningful.
He did spend two weeks under an involuntary detention in a state licensed mental institution.. anough to make ANYONE a “prohibited person”. He bought his rifle locally, and just months prior to his deadly use of it. That record HAD to have been available to local LE. I know in my state anyone charged with a felony of any sort, one of the first things they do is check for Mother May U Card, if the subject has one the Sheriff rolls a detail to his HOUSE, that day, demands the Card and all his firearms be surrendered. They are taoek into
“protecive custody” until the situaion is cleared. I would bet Maine have something similar on the books, and even if ttyey do not, n the face of the Guard’s sirens being soiunded to local SHeriffs, and his recent involuntary committment to the spych facility SHOULD have warrented a full in raid.. after checking to see recent gun purchses. LE were asleep at the wheel, and a couple dozen innocents are dead, with at least some of that blood on the hands of LE.
Makes me winder if maybe this guy wasn’t a manipulated patsy to stage an “incident” tto “justify” new gun restrictions in Maine. Not like anything resembling this has ever happened before, rught?
Choices were made by the people of Maine. With choices come consequences. Bad consequences come from bad choices. Want better outcomes. Make better choices.
For example; VOTE COLLINS, ET AL, out of office finally.
So the local po-po didn’t “try” because he’d shoot back?!? I guess the military is off the hook. I can bet if it comes to shooting back by pizzed off Illinois gat owner’s come January 1 a certain obese billionaire may back off🙄
Nope, he can’t, he will double down and bring in the NG if the local police can’t get the job done. They’ll seize your assets, cut power and water to your home, seal off any exits/entrances, and wait you out while occasionally sniping at you. They don’t have to kill you to destroy you. They also have the advantage of time and resources.
Meanwhile, the media will declare you a terrorist and celebrate the fat one’s initiative. The usual brainless sheep will eat it up and support him.
Unfortunately spot on for the majority of the country by population, with that said some areas would require a lot more effort.
Waiting till 1/1?
I don’t think Crissy Christy is a billionaire.
More proof Maine should have had a Red Flag Law. Yes, I know they had a complex Yellow Flag Law and that is exactly why the cops did not bother with all the legal rigamarole to implement it. Thank the ignorant Hilljacks of that state for not having a Red Flag Law and implementing a ridiculously complex Yellow Flag Law which was exactly why they implemented it so cops would not use it and they didn’t.
How much would you like to bet that Maine will soon gets a Red Flag Law?????? Unless they want another mass shooting soon.
dacian, the DUNDERHEAD, If you bothered to read the article, you would know that the Card family and the police dropped the ball. All the “Red Flag Laws” won’t do a damn thing, if you don’t even enforce the laws already on the books?
Second, Red Flag Laws are UNCONSTITUTIONAL due to the FACT that a “Red Flag Law” confiscates property PRIOR to “due process”. See the US Constitution. But Like any other good Leftist, you don’t care a flick about the Constitution or what it stands for.
Dacian the depraved: Obviously you know nothing about the case. The fact is, after being unable to contact the mentally ill man, the police contacted his brother and later his father. The father and brother assured the police that they would ensure that Card wouldn’t have access to firearms. That is why the yellow flag law wasn’t used.
Red flag laws are repugnant to the constitution and the bill of rights. They have been upheld through a “means-end” analysis meaning that the end justifies the means. When you slide down that slope you eventually end up with Josef Mengele. Further, with most red flag laws there are no consequences for abuse. A person flagging a neighbor just because he doesn’t like him, for example, goes unpunished even when it is shown that their only reason was harassment. In most such laws, the person flagged doesn’t even get to know who flagged them – no right to confront their accuser.
So learn the facts of a case before you spout off, review the constitution and bill of rights, and go peddle your nonsense elsewhere.
This is just the latest in a near-infinite list of examples where bureaucracies (government in this case) fail in spectacular fashion.
Most of us think of ourselves as excellent drivers and that is our primary method of managing the risk of car crashes. And yet we also have a “backup plan” to manage the risk of car crashes: automobile crash (repair/replacement) insurance in the event that our excellent driving is somehow not sufficient. Well, if you want to think that government law enforcement is excellent and your primary method to manage the risk of a violent attack, wonderful–what is your “backup plan” in the event that our excellent law enforcement is somehow not sufficient? I don’t know about you, but my “backup plan” is being armed for righteous self-defense.
Actually, my primary plan is to be armed for righteous self-defense. My backup plan is to have a cell phone so I can call the LPD either while defending or after having defended myself. This because when bad things happen the police are usually nowhere to be found. Not their fault, mind you, there’s only so many of them and so much ground to cover.
A plea to all the authoritarian statists out there: please stop trying to punish me for the failures of your system.
How else do we harass the law abiding then? If we tax you any more heavily it may cut into our profits until we find a way to open more nonprofit tax shelters to scam the system with……….yeah I am probably not even joking at this point.
NYC Renewal school program…$800 million.
ThriveNYC…$900 million.
What are the results other than a select few becoming extremely wealthy at the taxpayers expense? Where did the money go? Maybe someone should look into that. Nah, I’m sure it’s fine.
That’s an absurd level of (other people’s) money to burn through unless you’re a high ranking official in the Ukrainian government. For them, it’s September.
I don’t even get into NYC I see enough just in Albany especially with the city elected officials gaming the state grants.
There’s a largish federal facility in my neck of the woods. I know people who work there. They’ve wasted millions over nothing more than ego. It’s amazing. If that’s happening in Dudetown, I can only imagine what’s going on in NYC, Chicago, DC, etc.
NYC is peanuts compared to DC, Chicago I don’t know off hand but the Democrats know NYC and by majority NY is on lock so it’s only to keep paid for politicians bought. DC has turnover so need to buy them out with each election.
Maine is a constitutional carry state. It shocked me that no one was armed at the bowling center or the restaurant who could fight back and defend themselves AND others.
Bowling alley at least reportedly had a sign requesting that patrons not be armed. Apparently patrons were too law-abiding for their own good.
Choices were made..Albeit bad choices. Life works that way.
Another one “slipped through the cracks”. It is ALMOST like they need it to keep happening so they can pass more gun laws. No, no, no, that can’t be what is going on here. But it does seem strange that they have to demand that we pass more gun laws without waiting to see if there was any breakdown of the current system in place. Ehh, I’m probably just being paranoid.
They should have given him a a old school “GI shower” for threatening the unit..
How many E-7s have you known?
If the SOB threatened that unit… it would be arranged..Rank is irrelevant…
Law enforcement was supposedly warned about Cruz (Parkland School). The D.C. Shipyard shooter (kicked out of the Navy [a nut case]). The revolving door with arrests of thugs in the big cities. The left needs the chaos, to install an authoritarian government. Death by a thousand cuts metaphor?
^^^^
Yep. Columbine too. They bragged about bamboozling a counselor and said they were going to do it any and were ignored. THEY ARE ALLOWING IT TO HAPPEN!
The 10 Mass Shootings Since Lewiston You Didn’t Hear About
And why not? Because shut up, you racists!
The ten shootings left 14 dead and 65 wounded. Two took place in Chicago and left 19 people ventilated — 15 in just one shooting involving a handgun. Astonishingly, no one gave up the ghost. …
We have learned the press is picky about the mass shootings they report, but you likely knew that. — https://pjmedia.com/kevindowneyjr/2023/10/29/the-10-mass-shootings-since-lewiston-you-didnt-hear-about-n1738971
Waukesha Christmas parade killer vs Charlottesville, Virginia killer.
Compare and contrast the coverage and the body count.
They are allowing it to happen. End of story!
The NICS check either did not work or he lied. You can not legally pocess a firearmn if you’ve been involuntarily committed to a nut house.
The terroristic bomb threat and I’d still be sitting in jail.
If 70% of good citizens were armed 90% of crime would be stopped.
Around these parts I’m discovering knives are becoming the thing. So a gunm law wouldn’t do much about that.
You wont find many in the Amish gangs carrying gunms but they all got a knife.
Reread the background. He VOLUNTARILY committed himself.
Amish hunt/eat possum around here.
Another “known wolf”.
I’ve smelled a rat about this ever since the secondary information began to come out. IMHO it’s more fodder for election year and to support the wicked two-faced treasonous WRETCH COLLINS position on red flag laws. It’s absolutely insulting the Democrats (communists) think WE THE PEOPLE are too stupid to catch on to this. Noticeably since a Biden supporter did the shooting the media isn’t featuring this as much in the past. At least it wasn’t the fault of the USAF this time of a mental patient slipping through the cracks.
The stories the media lets you see are on purpose to manipulate you toward the desired outcome of their sick despotic agendas. Here is what I can control: if I see a Gun-Free sign or a NO GUNS sign or a Firearms Prohibited sign on some left wing, not-fit-to-lead, weak-sauce owner’s place of business and I want to go in, I am going in. And I am going in armed. And when MKUltra stooge walks in and starts blazing, he is going to get dropped and dirt napped quickly. Because unless the business owner can guarantee my security and the security of my loved ones with me, he and his sign are part of the problem. And every family of every shooting victim in a GunFreeZone establishment should sue the owner into oblivion for not protecting those in his property while banning their ability to protect themselves. These type of lawsuits need to start immediately.
Don’t disagree, but that was tried by the victims in the Aurora theater (another unsecured gun free zone) shooting.
They sued the theater. They lost, had to pay the theaters legal fees, and so added bankruptcy to tragedy, in a case of hellish injustice. Not to mention a national disgrace, and a stain on the Bill of Rights..
Many of those disarmed folks were active military, and died shielding their children. Damn near everybody in the place had a clear shot at the creep, just nothing to shoot with.
The blood dancers celebrated by inventing the Dark Smoky Theater meme, and claiming the helplessness of the victims actually REDUCED casualties.
But that was Front Range Colorado, maybe Maine would be different.
And I can guess what would have happened if thePolice or the ATF had raided him cuffed him possibly incarcwerated him and forcibly removed his weaponry. YOU LOT would have beenon his side .
Seriously though are you truly dELUSIONAL enough to actually believe that shp ort of incarcerating hime ther is NOTHING to stop him and other like him from obtaining their weapons of choice in 24 hours if they have the money in their pockets?
There is absolutely NOTHING that can be done to stop this kind of incident if the perpetrator is intelligent and determined enough No LAW ENFORCEMENT, no amount of POLICING NOTHING> WHY?? Because of the sheer damned AVAILABILITY of Firearms both LEGAL and ILLEGAL’
Years ago a friend of mine mfrom the UK was visiting his twin sister in HOUSTON TEXAS for a three month break after he had left the UK Military [a 25year Royal Engineer] His brother -in-law offered to source him a [TOTALLY ILLEGAL for a foreign visitor] and his Brother-in-law was a professional accountant and not some bloody bStreet jerk-off. He declined the offer but bhe did out of curiosity accompany his Bro to a Range on several occasions and and proceeded to shoot the shit out of most of the people there. R
emember this was NOT trained Infantry but an ex-Staff Sergeant of the Royal Engineers and on the Rifle, any rifle with IRON sights, he even won a bloody CUP of some sort
I hate those bloody cups, of blood I guess.
So many lives could have been saved if he’d used arson, vehicle battery, or explisives instead of guns.
You read this forum yet you seem incapable of absorbing its content. Having learned that he was sent by his commanding officer for mental health evaluation and had spent 2 weeks in a mental ward and that he had threatened to shoot up the base, I doubt that anyone here would have defended his right to have firearms.
There are millions of cars & trucks too, if people want to kill people, they’ll find a way. UK is a perfect example, you idiots are down to determining what knives people should be allowed to keep in their homes. Hammers & baseball bats are probably next. Don’t lecture us on our ways and we won’t remind you of how stupid the Brits are.
“proceeded to shoot the shit out of most of the people there.” – Moral of the story: Keep Brits out of the US they’re obviously insane.
Leftist governments want death and destruction.