America is picking its way through the aftermath of yet another mass shooting, this time in Lewiston, Maine, where at least 18 people died and at least 13 others were wounded last night when another previously law abiding gun owner stopped abiding the law and shot up a bowling alley and a restaurant. The reported casualty numbers last night and this morning have varied widely, and may well rise.
The suspected shooter is still at large as we write this, as law enforcement from all over join in searching for the shooter or perhaps his body and cable news fills time with expert opinion. People in the area have been told to shelter in place until the shooter is found. Businesses and schools are closed in Lewiston and several other locations around the state.
Law enforcement have identified the suspected shooter as Robert Card, “a firearms instructor believed to be in the U.S. Army Reserve and assigned to a training facility in Saco, Maine,” although police until recently preferred the term “person of interest” as if it were a useful distinction. Perhaps they just want to ask if he knows the real shooter.
We’ll take a moment to note here that Card’s politics, which we will visit later in this post, seem to be of the right-wing shoot-em-up variety. This isn’t so much to score political points as to point out that as is so often the case, the people who want guns to be free and easy — hell, mandatory — are usually the ones killing lots of people with guns.
Card was identified relatively quickly last night because he left his car, or his suspected car, in nearby Lisbon, Maine, where writer Stephen King went to high school, and Card’s alleged face was captured on multiple security cams. The AP adds that a police bulletin sent to law enforcement agencies in the area
said Card had been committed to a mental health facility for two weeks in the summer of 2023. It did not provide details about his treatment or condition but said Card had reported “hearing voices and threats to shoot up” the military base. A telephone number listed for Card in public records was not in service.
Oh, well, mental health! That means we can keep having more and more guns circulating, because the problem is absolutely not guns. We need everyone to have a gun so the sane gun people can take out the mentally ill ones.
The AP reports that in July, during Army Reserve training at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York, officers in Card’s battalion “became concerned” when Card began “acting erratically,” and called police to take him for evaluation at Keller Army Community Hospital in West Point. Hell no, nobody knows why he still had access to firearms after that; Maine doesn’t have a “red flag” law, however, and in America we only take your guns away — if at all — while you’re an active danger to yourself and others, because you might need to defend yourself from urban rioters or a tyrannical federal government once you’re no longer an immediate threat.
An arrest warrant has been issued for Card on eight counts of murder, since that’s the number of victims who have so far been identified, although their names have not yet been released.
The shooting spree started around 7 p.m. at Just-in-Time Recreation (formerly “Sparetime,” so you’ll see that name too), a bowling alley where a children’s bowling league was meeting. Seven people died there, according to a Maine State Police briefing. The second shooting site was about four miles away at Schemengees Bar and Grille, where another eight of the victims were found. The ages of the victims haven’t yet been released.
NBC News reports that Liam Kent, who grew up near Card’s home in nearby Bowdoin, Maine, described the place as “basically a compound” where
"The family and Robert, they're all gun fanatics," Kent said. "For all intents and purposes, they are very much associated with right-wing militias. It's known in the town to stay away from them and not approach them."
Kent said he vividly remembers when he went to the store as a kid and saw Card at a nearby weigh station with a dead deer. Card was grinning, covered in blood with a gun strapped to his body still.
"Also they would shoot guns all the time, you could hear them every day after school," Kent added. "It was like clockwork."
That might make it a little difficult for rightwingers to say Card was some sort of liberal, but we’re sure that narrative will emerge anyway.
Social media accounts on Xitter and Facebook that probably belonged to Card have been shut down; Newsweek reports that screenshots of the accounts indicate Card was a fan of several rightwing figures, and had “liked” posts by Donald Trump Jr., Dinesh D’Souza, and Tucker Carlson, as well as tweets by former House speaker candidates Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy.
Update: The account also had quite a few “likes” of posts by Elon Musk, a fact that prompted trans activist Alejandra Caraballo to speculate may have been one reason the account was removed immediately. By contrast, the Xitter account belonging to the creep who posted “Christian” and anti-gay stuff in the months leading up to his murder of Lauri Carleton — for having a Pride flag outside her business — remained up for days after police identified the killer.
In a detail that seems remarkably on the nose, Card allegedly liked a Don Jr. tweet from March that read
"Given the incredible rise of trans/non-binary mass shooters in the last few years… by far the largest group committing as a percentage of population… maybe, rather than talking about guns we should be talking about lunatics pushing their gender affirming bullsh*t on our kids?"
He also reportedly liked another anti-trans tweet by Tucker Carlson that declared, “The trans movement, it turns out, is the mirror image of Christianity, and therefore its natural enemy. People who believe they're God can't stand to be reminded that they're not.”
Another “like” reportedly went to a Dinesh D’Souza tweet arguing that assault weapons shouldn’t be banned, because
“cars kill more people than guns do. But we blame the drivers. We don't ban large or fast cars. We understand that cars, like guns, don't act by themselves. The blame lies with the people who operate these mechanical devices. Common sense 101.”
So how’s that for some unbeatable wisdom? We feel compelled to point out that Mr. Card nonetheless did not use a car to kill at least 18 people, which sure is a logical puzzle that we may never fathom.
President Biden has nonetheless called again on Congress to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines — and in fact had done so before the shooting, leading noted conspiracy enthusiast Laura Loomer to brand it Biden’s false flag — as well as to enact universal background checks, a safe storage law, and to repeal liability immunity for gun manufacturers. Gun humpers on Twitter explained in reply that there is no such thing as an assault weapon because you could still beat someone to death with a shoe.
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From a few threads ago
𝐴𝑢𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑟 𝑆𝑡𝑒𝑝ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝐾𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡 𝑔𝑢𝑛 𝑣𝑖𝑜𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑊𝑒𝑑𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑑𝑎𝑦’𝑠 𝑚𝑎𝑠𝑠 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛 𝑀𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑒, 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑡𝑜 “𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑝 𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑚𝑢𝑟𝑑𝑒𝑟.”