At least 16 people dead and suspect at large after multiple incidents in area of Lewiston, Maine

I’m glad he’s no longer a threat.

 

Plus the militia was in anachronism within a decade of the ratification. It's supposed to be an alternative to the standing army. If you believe the Second Amendment means we an a perpetual armed citizens militia, you believe the US Army is unconstitutional. They make arguments they don't even understand constitutionally. It's a nonsensical ahistorical argument

 

Colbert comments on the shooting and on Mike Johnson’s response/plans.

start at 8:15

 

Nobody stopped or prevented anything. He was 100% successful. Serial mass shooter who got away and ended it on his own terms before anyone even knew where he was or where he went. Nobody could have prevented any of this except Richard Card.

A very simple message needs to be sent out that might come back to someone at the moment they are about to do something like this:

Only YOU can prevent mass shootings. ONLY you. Not we. Not laws. Not thoughts and prayers. You.

 

The 48 hour mass murder terror has ended.

Maybe not the highest body count, but certainly a long reign of terror in this state.

 

Unorganized militias are not relevant for the constitution and are absent from it, including absent wrt the purpose & intent of 2a because it was a well-regulated militia of ordinary people and controlled by government that the framers intended.

In fact, unorganized militias can be outlawed.

My argument isn't to suggest that citizens have no right to guns. It's that the right to guns exists through the above intent, and that intent wasn't to ensure that any one individual can have guns but to prevent govt from forbidding the people from having & bearing guns for organized militia purposes. Neither 1a or 4a have a similar prefatory clause that directs the intent (though the many grammatical idiosyncrasies and ambiguities in the BoR are another matter worthy of discussion).

The flip side of this argument is that because govt has the right to organize, train, discipline and equip the militia, it follows that govt has the ability to regulate gun ownership, which is why contrary to latter day revisionism, gun registries, types, carry, and storage requirements, can all be controlled while remaining squarely w/in the confines of 2a. NTM, govt can literally define (or redefine) who qualifies for the militia and who doesn't for such purposes.

 

Please explain how armed Joe Citizen could have stopped this tragedy. It happened at a bowling area where the property owner prohibited firearms and in a bar. In Maine it is not legal to carry into either of those two places.

Concealed Carry in Maine | Maine State Police

 

No way to know but I doubt he would have killed that many people with a handgun or a shotgun. That seems to be the difference when AR15s are involved. Much higher body count. It’s not about total prevention. It’s about mitigation.

 

Richard Card could have stopped it. Nobody else.

Or Robert or whatever his name was.

 

So the new Republican plan to stop mass shootings is to have the shooter stop himself? Solid plan, as least as well thought out as anything coming from the Republicans in Congress.

 

A man with well documented mental issues, hearing voices in his head, documented violent intentions
And the issue is the firearm?
At what point are we actually going to look at the person pulling the trigger? And to be clear
I am
An advocate for red flag laws. I am
An advocates that documented mental issues like these are a reason to not allow gun ownership. But the issue wasn’t that he has an AR15
The issue is very very clearly the mental Illness.
But no one really wants to tackle that. Far to many asker to get emotional sound bytes with
Ban guns!!!

 

My favorite nonsensical argument is that the AR-15 is not an assault rifle because it doesn't have fully automatic fire like the M-4. They completely ignore the fact that the M-16 and M-4 without automatic fire were used as assault rifles for pretty much the entirety of combat operations post-Vietnam to the end of Afghanistan. I deployed to Afghanistan with a select fire M4 rifle (with 3 round burst capability) and an M9 sidearm pistol. You don't need fully automatic mode to make something a viable assault rifle that is deadly in combat, let alone on the streets against unarmed civilians.

 

In the absence of an abundance easily accessible firearms, mental illness is not the same threat to the general public. Every country has mental illness. Only one country has regular mass shootings. It’s the guns.

 

What a horrible sentiment. If this is true and Americans as a people are truly helpless, then this has indeed devolved into a shithole country.

 

This guy was clear that he want to do damage and violence to people. The guns were not the issue.

 

Not the only issue. But certainly a huge part of it. It’s the part of the equation that makes regular mass shootings unique to our country

 

Saying that guns are not an issue in gun violence is like saying that violence is not an issue in gun violence.

Also like saying that drugs are not the issue with drug overdoses.

 

This man wanted violence. Saying if he didn’t have a gun there wouldn’t have been violence is very pie in the sky Pollyanna type hoping. Wei