Lewiston shooting

[MU82]

  Simple answer- we don't   Facts matter
 very often after one of these horrible events we come to learn that all the red flags were ignored or laws were not followed
 

Glad you agree we need strong red-flag laws. That would be a decent start!

[Pakuni]

  Simple answer- we don't   Facts matter
 very often after one of these horrible events we come to learn that all the red flags were ignored or laws were not followed
 

This doesn't answer the question, or any question for that matter.
Do other countries not have people with mental illness? Do other countries not have people who don't follow the law?
There's something about this country that makes these kind of events occur far more frequently than anywhere else, and it's not the existence of the mentally ill and people who don't follow the rules.

[Pakuni]

'Cuz da Buffoon has maid everyone nuckin' futz. Drugs flow like pee and there are too many people with stinky brown matta berween der ears. Happy now, hey?

America wasn't made great again?

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

This doesn't answer the question, or any question for that matter.
Do other countries not have people with mental illness? Do other countries not have people who don't follow the law?
There's something about this country that makes these kind of events occur far more frequently than anywhere else, and it's not the existence of the mentally ill and people who don't follow the rules.

Yep. One side doesn’t want to deal with guns OR mental illness. People like Wellsstreet are growing more and more complicit in people dying. And he seems ok with that. 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

[4everwarriors]

Your deposed Mad King is nuckin' futz. He dines with anti-Semites, has a son-in-law who accepted $2B from Jew-haters, and calls to battle his merry band of violent neo-Nazis for his cop-bashing, democracy-scuttling coup attempts. And yet you, Mr. I'll Never Support Anti-Semites, bends the knee to him. No wonder you couldn't sleep at 3 in the morning.

For the record, I'm up every morning at 3:30 and take an outside walk of 9-10 miles, hey?

[Pakuni]

For the record, I'm up every morning at 3:30 and take an outside walk of 9-10 miles, hey?

In the snow, uphill both ways?

[Jockey]

Police across Maine were alerted just last month to “veiled threats” by the U.S. Army reservist who would go on to carry out the worst mass shooting in the state’s history, one of a string of missed red flags that preceded the massacre.


So much for red flag laws. The entire issue has been made into a farce by the NRA and the republicans.

The ONLY answer to reducing mass shootings is to ban assault rifles. Period.

Alas, the NRA and the r’s along with their lying supporters will make sure more assault rifles are in the hands of crazy people.

[4everwarriors]

In the snow, uphill both ways?

All weather, kin, unless it's lightning, hey?

[Skatastrophy]

For the record, I'm up every morning at 3:30 and take an outside walk of 9-10 miles, hey?

Man, good for you. (not sarcastic)

[Uncle Rico]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/cops-were-sent-maine-gunman-000853668.html

[MU82]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/cops-were-sent-maine-gunman-000853668.html

Good thing nobody took away his god-given right to own an arsenal of weapons.

1. Right to Bear Arms

Every other U.S. freedom is tied for last in importance.

[muwarrior69]

Wow. You don’t honestly believe this do you?

Because I don’t blame Trump for Las Vegas, El Paso, Gilroy, etc.  Do you?

When a gun man sets up weapons of war in a Las Vegas hotel room and sprays a music festival was it really Donald Trump’s fault?  I don’t believe it was. I put the blame on access to weapons of war not the POTUS.

The Palestinians don't have a chance fighting the IDF with their ar15s.

[lawdog77]

Good thing nobody took away his god-given right to own an arsenal of weapons.

1. Right to Bear Arms

Every other U.S. freedom is tied for last in importance.

Devil's advocate on this specific instance. If the police would have done what they could have, and used the yellow flag law instead of trusting his brother and dad to take away the guns. This could have been prevented.

[MU82]

Devil's advocate on this specific instance. If the police would have done what they could have, and used the yellow flag law instead of trusting his brother and dad to take away the guns. This could have been prevented.

Reasonable.

[Jockey]

Good thing nobody took away his god-given right to own an arsenal of weapons.

1. Right to Bear Arms

Every other U.S. freedom is tied for last in importance.

Or as any Constitutional scholar who can quote the entire thing says: “Blah, blah, blah. Everybody gets guns. Blah, blah, blah”.

[MU82]

From the Washington Post:

LOUISVILLE — About a year before Connor Sturgeon gunned down his co-workers at Old National Bank in April, some close to the 25-year-old knew he was having problems.

He had abruptly turned away from his companions during a family beach vacation and began walking into the ocean, later telling his parents he briefly considered drowning himself.

He had just started seeing a psychiatrist, and his parents thought his new medication might have been the cause of the suicidal thoughts. He had also experienced anxiety attacks at work, where some colleagues recall, he was falling short and frequently absent — a “no call, no show” employee, as one put it.

“He was in over his head,” said one colleague, Dana Mitchell, who had been a mentor to Sturgeon and was shot in the back during his attack.

But his parents say nobody in Sturgeon’s circle knew that on April 4, amid his struggles, he had purchased a gun. His psychiatrist, who had met virtually on April 6 with Sturgeon and his parents, had even indicated he was on the mend, Sturgeon’s parents recall.

“We had been led to believe he was over the hump and he was getting better,” his father, Todd Sturgeon, told The Washington Post. “We thought everything was okay.”

Then came the massacre.

On April 10, Sturgeon brought an AR-15 rifle into the downtown bank branch where he worked and began shooting — killing five and wounding eight before being shot and killed by a police officer.

While few details have emerged publicly about what motivated Sturgeon to kill, interviews with survivors, victims’ families and Sturgeon’s parents reveal frustration, sorrow and anger over how easy it had been for someone with apparent mental health problems to obtain a semiautomatic rifle built for mass violence. The interviews found that, six months after Sturgeon’s assault, those involved are struggling to understand why Sturgeon took aim at his co-workers and whether it could have been prevented.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2023/louisville-mental-health-guns-ar-15/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most

[MU82]

Devil's advocate on this specific instance. If the police would have done what they could have, and used the yellow flag law instead of trusting his brother and dad to take away the guns. This could have been prevented.

More on this from the NYT:

Six weeks before an Army reservist fatally shot 18 people in Lewiston, Maine, the police received alarming warnings that the reservist had grown increasingly paranoid, had punched a friend and had said he was going to carry out a shooting spree. But no law enforcement officials ever made contact with him, according to records released on Monday.

The warnings about the reservist, Robert R. Card II, 40, were far more explicit than Maine officials have publicly acknowledged in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting, America’s deadliest mass shooting this year. They came from Mr. Card’s family members and his Army Reserve unit in Saco, Maine, and were investigated by the Sheriff’s Office in Sagadahoc County, where he lived.

[Jay Bee]

Who could’ve guessed?!?!

[MU82]

Today's "The Morning" email newsletter from the NYT:

American gun violence can feel like an unsolvable problem, with every mass shooting, like last week’s killings in Maine, affirming that the situation is getting worse. But the U.S. has in fact made some progress over the past few decades, enacting policies that have saved lives.

That is the conclusion of a new study by Patrick Sharkey and Megan Kang at Princeton. Stricter gun laws passed by 40 states from 1991 to 2016 reduced gun deaths by nearly 4,300 in 2016, or about 10 percent of the nationwide total. States with stricter laws, such as background checks and waiting periods, consistently had fewer gun deaths, as this chart by my colleague Ashley Wu shows:



Sharkey told me that the results had surprised him. He has studied violent crime for years, and did not believe that stricter gun laws had a major effect in reducing it. His new takeaway: “The challenge of gun violence is not intractable, and in fact we have just lived through a period of enormous progress that was driven by public policy.”

The country’s progress on guns may surprise you, too. It certainly surprised me. It’s worth reflecting on why. If the data is clear, why haven’t we heard more about these outcomes? To my mind, the lack of attention shows the narrow view that many of us often take toward gun policy.

The national conversation about gun violence focuses on big federal policy ideas. Activists and pundits often speak about the need for a federal law enacting universal background checks or banning assault weapons. Anything short of action at the national level will fail to make the U.S. as safe as Canada, Europe or Japan, the argument goes.

It’s true that guns kill many more people in the U.S. than in other rich countries, and America will likely remain an outlier for the foreseeable future. But the study by Sharkey and Kang shows that changes at the state level can have an effect. Even policies that seem limited, like safety-training requirements or age restrictions, add up.

“There’s no single policy that is going to eliminate the flow or circulation of guns within and across states,” Sharkey said. “But the idea is these kinds of regulations accumulate.”

After all, America’s gun problem is rooted in easy access to firearms. In every country, people get into arguments, hold racist views or suffer from mental health issues. But when these problems turn violent, quick access to guns makes that violence much more likely to become lethal.

Anything that adds barriers to picking up a firearm in such moments reduces deaths, whether it’s incremental state policies or broader federal laws. The new study is one part of a broader line of research demonstrating that point.

Among the many new laws put in place since 1991: California required background checks on private gun sales in 1991, Massachusetts tightened child-access laws in 1998 and Virginia restricted gun ownership by people with mental illnesses in 2008.

There is a major caveat to the progress that Sharkey and Kang documented: It seems to have ended.

The new study cuts off in 2016 because later data was not available at the time of the research, Sharkey said. Since 2016, many states have loosened their gun laws, in some cases because Supreme Court rulings have forced them to do so. And firearms sales have surged, particularly during the Covid pandemic.

Congress did pass a narrow gun control law last year that extended background checks and funded anti-violence policies, and some states have continued tightening gun laws. On net, though, U.S. gun laws have become looser in the past seven years.

Gun deaths have increased over the same period, and mass shootings have become more common. These trends — a rise in deaths, looser laws and increased firearm purchases — are likely related, Sharkey said. He pointed out that the six states that had weakened their gun laws from 1991 to 2016 appeared to have experienced more gun deaths than other factors suggested they should have.

As more states have loosened their laws in recent years, they have set themselves up for more gun deaths. “If states take basic steps to regulate guns, it will save thousands and thousands of lives,” Sharkey said. The opposite is also true.

[jesmu84]

One thing Malcolm Gladwell talked about that I hadn't thought about before is that sometimes homicide rate or death rates improve as a result of improved medical/trauma care in a geographic region rather than other factors and that frequently isn't discussed.

So, rather than death rates or homicide rates, we should look at regulations compared to gun violence instead.

[Jockey]

So to put Mike’s post at its simplest:

Red states = more murders.
Blue states = less murders.

[Pakuni]

'Merica

A New York man allegedly pointed a gun at the head of a 6-year-old boy who had dropped off a Halloween goody bag at the wrong home and went to retrieve it, police said.
Michael Yifan Wen, 43, of Manhasset, was arrested and charged with menacing and second-degree endangering the welfare of a child, Nassau County police said in a statement. [/i

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-allegedly-points-gun-6-year-old-left-halloween-goody-bag-wrong-hou-rcna123025]

[Galway Eagle]

'Merica

A New York man allegedly pointed a gun at the head of a 6-year-old boy who had dropped off a Halloween goody bag at the wrong home and went to retrieve it, police said.
Michael Yifan Wen, 43, of Manhasset, was arrested and charged with menacing and second-degree endangering the welfare of a child, Nassau County police said in a statement. [/i

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-allegedly-points-gun-6-year-old-left-halloween-goody-bag-wrong-hou-rcna123025]

Look he was a good guy with a gun... now he's an example of a bad guy with a gun and why that kid needed to have his own gun. Obviously.

[lawdog77]

'Merica

A New York man allegedly pointed a gun at the head of a 6-year-old boy who had dropped off a Halloween goody bag at the wrong home and went to retrieve it, police said.
Michael Yifan Wen, 43, of Manhasset, was arrested and charged with menacing and second-degree endangering the welfare of a child, Nassau County police said in a statement. [/i

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-allegedly-points-gun-6-year-old-left-halloween-goody-bag-wrong-hou-rcna123025]

Well, they did take away his gun license (hopefully that means the police can go through his house to look for any guns). Will be curious to see how long it takes him to get it back.

I read the yahoo article as well. This part I think is great:
Michael Yifan Wen, a resident of the infamous Long Island, has been arrested for allegedly pointing his gun at a young boy.

[Uncle Rico]

Well, they did take away his gun license (hopefully that means the police can go through his house to look for any guns). Will be curious to see how long it takes him to get it back.

I read the yahoo article as well. This part I think is great:
Michael Yifan Wen, a resident of the infamous Long Island, has been arrested for allegedly pointing his gun at a young boy.

If the kid had a gun to protect himself, it wouldn’t have been a big deal but not we want to cancel this guy for protecting his house from a 6 year old