Lewiston, Maine by Tom Reynolds
Reuters reported on Thursday that 18 people were killed and 13 were wounded when a man with what appears to be a semi-automatic rifle attacked patrons at a bowling alley and a bar in the city of Lewiston, Maine, the previous night.
Robert R. Card is being hunted as a person of interest and an arrest warrant has been issued.
Card is a U.S. Army reservist who law enforcement had committed to a mental health facility over the summer. According to the bulletin from the Maine Information & Analysis Center, a unit of Maine State Police, he was, “reported to have been committed to mental health facility for two weeks during summer 2023 and subsequently released." The Associated Press reported he was “acting erratically in mid-July” while taking part in training at West Point. Police in New York were called and Card was taken to West Point’s Keller Army Community Hospital for evaluation.
The gun grabbers, especially Joe Biden, have already come out in force. Guns bad. Red Flag laws good. Constitutional rights are of no interest.
Reuters, of course, had to add that, “Guns are lightly regulated in Maine, a largely rural state near the northeast border with Canada where about half of all adults live in a household with a gun, according to a 2020 study by RAND Corporation.
Later, Reuters added that, “Maine, which has the fourth-lowest murder rate in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of annual homicides in the state has fluctuated between 16 and 29 since 2012, according to Maine State Police.”
Lots of guns in Maine but a low gun murder rate. Doubtful that fact will get picked up by left-wing organizations or mentioned by Joe Biden and company.
Reuters also added, “Maine does not require a permit to buy or carry a gun, and it does not have so-called "red flag" laws seen in some other states that allow law enforcement to temporarily disarm people deemed to be dangerous.”
Not mentioned is that Maine does have a ‘yellow flag’ law which allows police to petition for temporary confiscation of a person’s firearms after an examination by a professional trained in these issues. It deals with the potential problem while solving the constitutional issue of due process of law. Imagine that, Maine does not have ‘Red Flag’ laws, but they certainly do have laws in place to deal with mentally ill people.
Oh yeah, why was Maine’s ‘yellow flag’ law not used?
Notice that, in the midst of the Reuters’ article about a shooting, Reuters used the generic “murder” and “homicide” words which include murders and homicides not involving a gun. But you are not supposed to pick up on the fact that gun related deaths are even less.
And questions that are certainly not going to be asked by the media: what psychotropic drugs was he prescribed and what were the side effects? Was he actively using the drugs? Was he addicted? Was he using other illegal drugs?
And especially to be avoided: was he a cannabis user?
The average non gun owner probably doesn’t know much about the issues behind gun ownership and the average person doesn’t know about the government’s failures when it runs mental health institutions. But they do know that the media will continue the drum beat that guns are bad and avoid any evidence that does not fit the narrative.
