Mass murder in Lewiston, Maine [UPDATED]
At least 22 people are dead and 50-60 more were injured in a mass shooting at two businesses in Lewiston, Maine, according to NBC News.
The Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office said around 8 p.m. that a suspect was at large, sharing a photo of an armed man in what appeared to be a place of business. …
Lewiston police Lt. Derrick St. Laurent told NBC affiliate News Center Maine that the shootings occurred at Sparetime Recreation, a bowling alley, and Schemengees, a restaurant.
I know a fair amount about the town of Lewiston, so I’m going to add some things that don’t appear in any of the news stories I’ve read. Lewiston is the second largest city in Maine, but it’s nevertheless small – around 37K – and its population is somewhat atypical for Maine: 77.9% White, 13.9% Black or African American, 1.2% Asian, 0.4% Native American. The large number of black people in Lewiston are Somali immigrants and their descendants, starting in 1999. This caused a certain amount of upheaval at the time in a city that wasn’t doing well economically, having been dependent – like so much of New England – on mills. Lewiston also has an unusually large French-speaking population which is around 25% of the inhabitants. I know people from Lewiston whose first language in the home was French; it’s not at all unusual.
What does this have to do with the shooting in a town that ordinarily has an extremely low crime rate? Perhaps nothing. The photo of the alleged perp is definitely not of a Somalian, so that can be ruled out. I wonder, however, if his victims were random or if they were Somalian. There is virtually no information of this, so it is mere speculation on my part about whether it’s relevant at all.
RIP to all the victims.
UPDATE:
A suspect has been identified, and he is someone with documented and allegedly serious mental health issues. His name is Robert Card and he doesn’t live in Lewiston:
Fox-3 in New York reported that his last known address was in Bowdoin, Maine.
CBS News reporter David Begnaud posted on X that Mr. Card is ”a trained firearms instructor believed to be in the Army reserve stationed out of Saco, ME.”
Citing “law enforcement,” Mr. Begnaud also posted that Mr. Card “recently reported mental health issues including hearing voices and threats to shoot up the National Guard base in Saco.”
This was also not his first run in with the mental-health system, Mr. Benaud reported, saying the suspect was “committed to a mental health facility for 2 weeks in the summer of 2023.”
Why was this guy out on the streets?
I have three friends who graduated from Bates College in Lewiston and enjoyed their years in college there, so the news hits me on a personal level too.
Very…..Very smearing hatred
go see specialist Neo
Zeo:
Go see someone who can teach you how to read.
I said that the shooter was NOT Somali, but that I wondered whether his victims were or whether they were random. The shooter is a white guy from the photo. I was concerned about whether Somalis were targeted. Nothing racist about that, unless you think I’m prejudiced against white people.
From NBC: “The Lewiston Police Department named Robert Card, 40, as a ‘person of interest’ in the shootings at a bar and a bowling alley tonight. Card ‘should be considered armed and dangerous. Please contact law enforcement if you are aware of his whereabouts,’ the police department said on Facebook.”
Fox News live stream here: evidently the police have taken Card into custody:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p526Y6KJQI0
I see we have a new troll, Zeo, totally unacquainted with Neo, this blog, or reading comprehension.
Currently listening with my third ear to news broadcasts.
As with all such crises, I intend to invoke the three-day-rule before opining on any of it, after the media finishes with their initial mostly-wrong reports and speculations.
Nevertheless, condolences to the families of the victims, and sympathy to the people of the town, who will be dealing with this tragedy.
I guess the boiler rooms are getting desperate for trolls these days. Hopefully zeo will be dispatched more quickly than zaphod was.
Zaphod wasn’t really a troll, just usually out of step with a lot of commenters.
Sometimes way out of step.
@zeo
Ok troll. “Smearing hatred” of whom or what?!?
See a specialist For What? Why don’t you be more specific and have the courage of your convictions, however foul or wrong they may be?!?
zaphod was absolutely a troll. He should have been axed the first time he maliciously derailed a non-political thread about Judaism.
I am wondering if he recently purchased the firearm used in the attacks or if he already owned it.
Just found this on Maine Red Flag Laws. Answer No, But —–
Maine does not have a red flag law. Instead, it’s a yellow flag or yellow paper law. It’s a process with more steps than the more assertive red flag laws in some states.
That means they do have “extreme risk protection orders” that can be used for law enforcement officers to remove firearms from the possession of people at risk of using guns to harm themselves or others. But in Maine, a medical practitioner must first “assess whether the person presents a likelihood of foreseeable harm.”
SHIREHOME
That medical person might be found in the facility where Card stayed for two weeks. If it wasn’t instead a clerk who turned him loose.
hes another known wolf
Well, it looks like the perp is white, so our fearless establishment media will investigate him down to the sub-atomic level.
Were he any other ethnic background, I’m pretty certain that the whole thing would remain a mystery.
And yes, I’ve discovered lately that I just can’t be cynical enough for the times.
To answer Neo’s question about why he was out: it’s nearly impossible to keep someone in inpatient psych now. I have a nephew who is bipolar. In the last year he’s caused a lot of trouble for the family. They had him committed twice: once for 23 days, the second time for 5 days. They give him his meds, he may or may not take it, they let him out.
Thanks to the ACLU, the homeless industry and the USSC, there are no asylums anymore. They ruled that mentally ill people have as much of a right to be out on the streets as you and me.
All part of the 50 year campaign to destroy us from within. If all of these people came out and said they were trying to ruin the American psyche, would they do anything different than they are now?
Until we return to opening up mental hospitals and commit the mentally ill to those places, sometimes permanently, these shootings will continue to happen. It’s been reported the guy was hearing voices, for goodies sake! I place the entire blame for these shootings on the mental health profession for the last 40 years.
It seems to me the Yellow Flag Law could have been applied here, since the shooter had actually been in a mental facility this past summer, but someone would have had to follow through. There’s no word I’ve seen on whether he has family. A man who threatened to shoot up a military base ought not to be on the street, or if on the street, ought not to have his firearms handy.
There are just too many (very often drug addled as well) psychos running around.
Rather than good ol’ gun control, how about psycho control, and the reestablishment of mental hospitals with tough commitment laws to match.
Far too many people who should be in custody, medicated, and monitored are (sometimes) held briefly, declared by some psychiatrist/psychologist to be “no longer a danger to society,” and are released to end up attacking people.
How about the incident in D.C. yesterday, in which a street person slapped around two pre-K teachers who were just taking 30 toddlers for a walk, what an “education” for these kids–and it could have been a lot worse.
How about all of the crazies who have been shoving people in NY in front of subway trains, etc. etc.
How about all of the street people/homeless/aggressive panhandlers now wandering around, talking to themselves, gesticulating, and screaming to the skies. Passing by, you never know when one of these people will just go off, and attack you.
By the way, I am glad, Neo, that your original speculation about the victims was wrong — not that it helps the people who were actually shot by a madman. RIP.
I hate that I feel like the answer to Neo’s final question, “Why was this guy out on the streets?” is Somebody want these things to happen. I feel like this is part of the plan by our leaders to make us willing to give up our guns.
It probably is really just incompetence and laziness but it happens often enough to feel planned or at least desired.
In the case of the severely mentally ill–especially the severely and intractably mentally ill–it seems to me that public policy has gone way overboard in favor of the minority of us who are mentally ill and who actually need hospitalization, medication, and supervision, and that the majority of us–who are arguably more sane–are paying an increasingly high price for these people’s “freedom” from hospitalization, medication, and supervision
This is an area of public policy in which the principle of the needs of the majority trumping the needs of the minority needs to be applied.
P.S.–It seems to me that what we might call today’s “psychic atmosphere” is permitting/bringing out a lack of control, hysteria, and the crazy in a lot more people–take a look, for instance, at a lot of the “Karen” videos on YouTube.
If he is really in the reserves, I wonder what his deployment history is?
” Mental illness ” or demonic possession or not, this is the kind of thing you need to have the death penalty for, within a year of trial.
Re : Demonic possession. I know this may not be wildly accepted among the regulars here, but I do think that strong demonic influence, whether ” possession ” is the right word, is possibly PART of what is often described as ” mental illness”, especially among the violent or self destructive mentally ill.
Martin–How about the “career criminals” with a very long “rap sheet” who just keep getting little or no jail time, and who are released, over and over again, out and about to prey on law abiding citizens.
One story out this week was of a very promising young surgeon, murdered by such a long time criminal who had been arrested something like 66 times.
Letting the criminals and the crazies out to terrorize a society is certainly a good way to destabilize that society.
“A suspect has been identified, and he is someone with documented and allegedly serious mental health issues.”
Can everyone see my “shocked!” face?
I don’t know, but I wonder if psychological diagnoses haven’t also been reworked, so that many more people who, in past decades, might have been adjudged as being candidates for long term hospitalization and treatment are not today?
Yes, I know that we now have all sorts of new drugs, but it appears that some mental illness just can’t be medicated away.
It’s almost like the older generations knew a thing or two, like (a) strongly discourage the use of drugs, especially those with hallucinogenic side effects, and (b) compulsory institutionalization of the mentally ill.
(b) compulsory institutionalization of the mentally ill.
==
The boundary conditions for that are just what?
How do you shoot this many people without encountering at least one armed citizen?
As for why he was on the streets, my answer is simple- we don’t have the collective will to protect ourselves any longer, and probably haven’t had that will for at least 50 years. Concealed carry is useless where it is illegal and/or isn’t used by at least 5% of the men.
“The boundary conditions for that are just what?“
People who annoy the state I imagine.
If the victims were primarily Somali, that would have been the lede blasted internationally before the bodies had cooled, instead of the “fact” that the shooter was a “gun expert”.
Concealed carry is also negated by duty to retreat laws. I do not know what it is in Maine, but if the law is written where you must retreat unless you are a cop, what legal carrying adult can do anything unless they are right there?
You look at the videos of places overrun by the homeless and by street drugs, places, for instance, like the Kensington neighborhood in Philadelphia, and it’s hard to imagine that the obviously very rough and dangerous life these drug addicts and mentally ill people are living on the streets–living in supposed “freedom”–is better for them and their “quality of life,” and longevity than what they would experience being institutionalized, cleaned up, medicated, well-dressed and fed, being looked after, and living in sanitary and much safer conditions.
Yeah, they’re no longer “free,” but “free” to do what–to starve, to OD on drugs, to die from hypothermia, or to be at the mercy of street criminals?
Art Deco wrote:
“(b) compulsory institutionalization of the mentally ill.
==
The boundary conditions for that are just what?”
Back when the legal profession was more about the rule of law than thinly disguised political activism, creating and policing such boundary conditions would have been right in its wheelhouse.
Now, how could anyone be certain that those boundary conditions wouldn’t be abused politically? Heck, we have the 2016 nominee of one of our two major parties (and Yale law graduate) openly talking about “reeducation camps” for supporters of the other party. How much do you want to bet that Larry Tribe and company could come up with a legal theory about how reeducation camps for non-leftists are necessary, good, and completely consistent with the Bill of Rights.
And so we get this, followed by the less-than-useless calls for more gun control in response. Down and down we go.
Rest in peace to the victims.
For those who wish to know more about the destruction of mental health, dating back to the 60s, I recommend “My brother Ron.” It is getting harder to find but does a good job of explaining how it all happened.
Concealed carry is also negated by duty to retreat laws.
“I would rather be tried by 12 than carried by 6.”
About dealing with the drug addicted mentally ill: Canada is proposing to extend its “Medical Assistance in Dying” (MAiD) program to include substance addicts. A recent British visitor to Vancouver noted: “A few weeks ago, I accidentally toured one of the awful tent cities in Vancouver, Canada. At the corner of Main Street and Hastings Avenue, homeless drug addicts spread their few possessions out on blankets and cover the pavement for blocks on end. It is only a short distance from the restaurants and attractions of this fairly affluent city and is easy to stray into.
So long as they are not violent, homeless addicts are generally ignored across the city. Vancouverites, in that polite Canadian way, accept their presence and do what they can to be kind. Nonetheless, everyone I met spoke about the ‘crisis’ of addicts in Vancouver, where drugs have effectively been decriminalised.
Now, the Canadian authorities seem to have come up with a novel, frightening solution to the crisis: euthanasia. . . . While MAID covers both euthanasia and assisted suicide, almost all MAID deaths in Canada are carried out by a doctor.
This is already horrific enough. But from March 2024, those suffering from mental illnesses – with no physical ailments necessary – will also be eligible for MAID. That includes people with substance-use disorders. . . . Last week, a framework for assessing people with substance-use disorders for MAID was discussed at the annual conference for the Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine in British Columbia.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/10/25/canadas-euthanasia-programme-is-flirting-with-eugenics/
HT: Blazing Cat Fur
Maine apparently allows concealed carry, so Yancey Ward’s question about why an armed citizen wasn’t at either the bowling alley or the restaurant is a good one.
JohnBaker–If you start to look at what experts in the civilian use of deadly force and lawyers who specialize in this area say, once you have successfully defended yourself or your family members using deadly force, your ordeal has just begun.
That’s because you will often be dragged off to jail in handcuffs, there sometimes to await the decision by some DA on whether or not to prosecute you for the way you’ve defended yourself and/or for what you might have injudiciously said to the cops who talked to you/questioned you as you were coming down off the adrenaline high of fighting and surviving.
Moreover, your defense can take quite some time, and bankrupt you, consuming hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyer’s fees.
(P.S. There are several companies/programs which claim to be able to put you in contact with a lawyer who specializes in this sort of defense, and which will also supposedly pay for your legal expenses.
However, from what I’ve read, you have to be very careful about which such service you sign up with, because many of them have long involved contracts which will allow them to squirm out of paying for your defense, saying, for instance, things like that they will pay for your legal defense, as long as you are not being charged with having committed a crime in the course of defending yourself–they ain’t gonna defend a supposed “criminal.”)
Not to mention what can happen to you, as we’ve all seen, if your particular incident can be twisted and used for the benefit of some cause or official.
You know that the anti-gun forces are going to be waving the bloody shirt over this.
Maine is a “constitutional carry” state – any citizen over 21 may carry a firearm, concealed or not, peacefully. Sounds bad for the gun nuts, doesn’t it? “Didn’t help, did it? Take ’em all!”
(Not so) Minor counterfactual: carrying a firearm into any business serving alchol is illegal. Both sites of the shootings served alcohol.
Bauxite–The problem here is, of course, that any evaluative process, law, or regulation can be misused, if it is administered by a bunch of dishonest, malignant clowns who are driven by far Left or far Right ideology.
It’s interesting to compare present-day treatment of active shooters with military backgrounds with the lifelong hospitalization of Howard Unruh, generally considered the first of the post-WWII rampage killers. Unruh was a WWII veteran, had served in the Army in the Battle of the Bulge, was considered a good soldier, and was honorably discharged. Later it was found that he had kept detailed notes about the corpses of the German soldiers he had killed in the Bulge.
It was after Unruh came home to Camden, NJ, that his family noticed he had changed. He picked quarrels with his neighbors and became increasingly paranoid– among other matters, Unruh was gay, which he had to hide in 1949. His shooting rampage was apparently triggered by his being stood up on a date with another man.
On the morning of September 6, 1949, Unruh threatened his mother with a monkey wrench. He then picked up a Luger pistol he had brought home as a war souvenir and started on his “Walk of Death,” in which he killed 13 people (men, women, and children) and severely wounded four others. Unruh was considered too mentally ill to stand trial, and was confined to a state mental hospital in Trenton for the rest of his life. He died in 2009 at the age of 88.
There is a detailed account of Unruh’s personal history as well as his “Walk of Death” in the Smithsonian magazine; you can read it at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/story-first-mass-murder-us-history-180956927/
What is particularly interesting is the speculations of present-day forensic psychiatrists that Unruh had a personality disorder rather than paranoid schizophrenia (a catchall diagnosis in the 1940s); that he knew right from wrong; and that he would be expected to stand trial by contemporary standards.
Thanks, buddhaha, that explains it.
Another “known wolf.”
https://i0.wp.com/liveboston.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/IMG_0519.png?w=1125&ssl=1
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2022/12/08/why-are-they-always-known-wolves-n516355
OH crap! Here they come again–GUN CONTROL ADDICTS !
If the mental facility let him go on the assessment that he was not a danger to himself or others, are they liable?
One might say, with a great deal of validity, that this psych business is pretty shaky and they don’t know as much as they want you to think they do and so they shouldn’t be held to any standards at all.
Or…qualified immunity? Sovereign immunity?
If I recall the Parkland case, the fibbers are paying out a good deal of money to the next of kin.
I heard someone say that, if he commits a crime, he’ll identify as a female olympic gymnast and become invisible.
The only thing I could say in defense of the law business in this area is that the membrane between what’s being done now and forcibly incarcerating political opponents is measured in bazzilionths of an inch. The slightest retreat from excessive caution is catastrophe.
I don’t often go to the Daily Beast for information, but DB seems to have some good dope today:
__________________________________
“I have known Rob my whole life,” [Katie Card, Robert Card’s sister-in-law] said on Thursday. “He is quiet but the most loving, hardworking, and kind person that I know. But in the past year, he had an acute episode of mental health, and it’s been a struggle.”
She said that Robert Card recently began wearing powerful hearing aids to combat hearing loss. Since then, Card said her brother-in-law has been insisting to his family that he can hear people bashing him—including at Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley and Schemengees Bar and Grill, where he’s accused of gunning down 18 people on Wednesday night.
“He truly believed he was hearing people say things,” she added. “This all just happened within the last few months.”
…
Katie Card said her brother-in-law would “get mad” when they told him the voices were just in his head. His mental health issues resulted in a weeks-long stay at a facility over the summer, she said.
“Things have kind of gone downhill recently,” Card told the Beast.
“We tried to listen to him and tell him that nobody was talking about him,” she added. “Yesterday, as the story was unfolding, we prayed that Rob had nothing to do with this. But when we heard the two places where the shooting happened, my husband rushed home.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/family-reveals-suspected-gunman-robert-cards-link-to-maine-massacre-sites
__________________________________
Sounds like real mental health issues.
Why are there Somalis in Lewiston? Why are they not in Somalia? Answer: because State Dept. slobs felt sorry for them in the Kenyan refugee camps AND BROUGHT THEM OVER, apparently so we could have our homegrown jihadis. Minneapolis is full of them.
Minnesota’s 5th District (with Minneapolis at its core) is also where the execrable Ilhan Omar made her beds and her political career. The Somali enclave in Minneapolis is all but an American banlieue.
@PA+Cat
A sober reminder and a decent overview of a forgotten mass murderer, but even then it looks like it is tainted by Propaganda and The Message, as well as history misidentified. Some of it is probably dumb or inaccurate, but I can’t believe some of it isn’t politicized.
Firstly, the idea that it is the first “Mass Shooting” in American History even in terms of the 20th century is dubious. The Bath School Massacre of 1927 by Kehoe had most of the victims killed by bombing but still saw extensive and lethal gunfire. Kehoe also fits the “Lone Wolf” like a glove.
Secondly, there’s this tripe.
Mr. Schechter should go study history and then do something anatomically impossible to himself.
Firstly: Semi-Automatic Weaponry had been common for decades in the US, since at least the late 19th century.
Secondly: Even before then, you had the ability to stack loaded flintlock weapons and draw and fire them in succession, which was a common pirate and military trick that saw a fair bit of use in the American Frontier.
The issue is many of the mass shootings happened against the backdrop of wars (especially on the American Frontier). They were also much less likely to go unanswered and claim so many victims because the public was typically quite well armed and would take matters into their own hands or at least risk doing so. Blood Meridian may be semi-historical but I think it gives a decent overview of this stuff, as does the historical and supposedly factual confession it is based on.
Why they feel so inclined to downplay things like Bath and especially Kehoe are beyond me, but the decision to obsess about the gun types just screams to me politics, and I’m both sick and terrified of it.
Barry Meislin linked this article in the “balancing” thread, but it is certainly relevant here as well, as relating to the failure of our society to find a way to manage mental illness with positive results for the patients and the public.
The ideology of “pathological kindness to oppressed groups” can certainly be extended to the Leftist “concern” for the “dignity” of deranged potential killers, as well as for actual known criminals.
https://unherd.com/2023/10/the-tyranny-of-pathological-kindness/
My interpretation of Maine law (IANAL) is that use of deadly force is not allowed if safe retreat is possible (except in one’s own dwelling).
If there was a emergency exit that the victims could have left through, technically a concealed carrier would not have been authorized to shoot the perpetrator.
That’s stupid and wrong, but that’s the law.
Texas law is way better- deadly force is authorized if someone is trying to hurt you, break into your house or occupied vehicle, or steal your stuff at night. It’s also ok to use deadly force to protect a 3rd party under such circumstances.
Zaphod was a mixture of things and certainly not purely a troll. But he was anti-Semitic, and because I got rid of the worst of his screeds you only saw some of what he wrote in that vein. I kept putting him in moderation, but he would resume the anti-Semitism when I let him out of moderation. Finally, he let loose with a lot of iquite poisonous nvective while he was in moderation and that’s when I banned him. He was taking up too much time and effort.
Turtler–
Long before Kehoe there was the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857, in which somewhere between 120 and 140 members of a wagon train in what was then Utah Territory were killed by a group of Mormon militiamen and some Southern Paiutes. Yes, that was a frontier incident.
I know that Howard Unruh was hardly the first mass shooter, but the fact that he was a WWII veteran apparently played a role in the attention given to his case. I first came across his name in a 1980s article on the way veterans of the Vietnam War were slandered as psychiatric accidents waiting to happen. I think Unruh became a case study in post-combat fragility for a certain school of psychiatry in the 1950s and following, and so he (for a time, anyway) was cited as proof of the need to keep a careful eye on veterans– or at least on those who had seen combat.
@neo I had been wondering when he had been banned since I was a lurker and saw him here and there until I didn’t. Dare I ask when it happened?
But yeah. It amazes me how one of the oldest hatreds can convince so many people who seem otherwise learned and even smart. But if what didn’t get out of moderation was worse I dread to imagine what it was like.
@PA+CAT
Indeed, and Mountain Meadows was so devastating in part because it was a false flag where the Mormon militia pretended to be the metaphorical cavalry coming to save the settlers, at which point they disarmed them and the real murders started. Sadly that’s not even the most egregious case. Mystic comes to mind (even if it was during a war). A lot of the people talking about muh American violence against Amerindians ignore both how violent pre-Colombian history could be but also how if anything behavior got better after Independence, at least on the whole. Andrew Jackson would have fit right in in the late 1600s and early 1700s.
I’m not even necessarily opposed to the idea of keeping an eye on veterans, especially combat veterans, but there are different layers to do it. Unruh was obviously a special case even during his supposedly exemplary military career, and afterwards he fell apart and boiled. And of course there was his rage issues as well as hypocrisy and repressed sexuality (which might explain a bit why he isn’t remembered as much). And I still thank you for the article, you were being nothing but helpful. But I have become even more hypersensitive to this kind of nonsense and “The Narrative.”
Turtler:
The banning was around 2/22, I believe.
If the shooters personality suddenly changed, I wonder if he has a brain tumor?
}}} The Bath School Massacre of 1927 by Kehoe had most of the victims killed by bombing but still saw extensive and lethal gunfire.
I’m sorry, Turtler, but… source? To the best of my knowledge, there were zero guns used here but in the final death/suicide, in which in used a Winchester Model 54 (.30-06) to set off an explosive charge.
From the wiki (granted, it’s wiki, but this has been on wiki for a very very long time, suggesting accuracy)
I am open to being wrong, but AFAIK, this rifle was the only gun used to kill anyone, and even that was (apparently) to set off the explosives in his truck, not to shoot anyone. No one was directly shot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
}}} Why was this guy out on the streets?
The better to claim a need to control your guns, my dear.
From what I’m seeing on Youtube, these days it’s the police who are encountering and having to deal with the mentally ill, and since we’ve essentially dismantled and largely closed down the former system of mental hospitals, and eliminated the “loitering” and the formerly easier involuntary commitment laws, I guess that is to be expected.
So, apparently, if you don’t voluntarily go to a doctor or to a mental health facility for treatment, your relatives don’t take the hard road to try to get you committed, and you manage to avoid coming to the attention of the police you are, in essence, “free as a bird,” and able to do whatever crazy, dangerous, hostile, violent, or murderous thing your mental illness tells you to do.
@OBloodyHell
No worries.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180302192126/http://daggy.name/tbsd/cinquest.htm
The best is the horse’s mouth, the inquest itself, which pointed out Kehoe’s extensive history shooting as well as the decision to use the explosives to push people out of the building, at which point he opened fire on them for some time. This is one reason why there was a struggle with the gun.
In particular Kehoe killed his first victim with the gun, his wife, whose body was later found.
Suffice it to say, I don’t know the exact number of deaths from gunshot but Kehoe certainly had at least one (his wife) and many more injured. Like the Columbine Murderers it was a combined attack, with the big ticket items being the bombs and firepower being used to kill as many of the survivors as possible. Unfortunately in this case Kehoe was a far better engineer than Harris or Klebold were.
Maine embraced recreational marijuana years ago. Don’t rule out the possibility of reefer madness, i.e. a psychotic break induced by high potency modern weed.
P.S. We have all of these supposedly marvelous new psychiatric drugs, but #1, you have to want to take them on a regular basis, and #2, you have to be in good enough shape to remember to take them on a regular basis.
I don’t know how many stories I’ve read, over the years, in which some family member says–of someone who has just committed some violent crime or the other–“he just stopped taking his meds.”
I gather that one of the very common problems is that, once some of your symptoms recede, the tendency is to imagine that you have been cured, and that you no longer need to keep taking your meds.
Finally, I’ve seen a few articles alleging that some of the more commonly prescribed psychoactive drugs (or other non-psychiatric drugs as well) are actually causing more mental illness/violent behavior.
Snow on Pine:
Yes, people stop taking meds, in part because they feel better and in part because they don’t like the side effects. The consequences of stopping are usually quite bad.
I’ve researched the question of whether anti-depressants cause more suicides, and my answer is no they do not. Somewhere there’s a post I wrote about it, but I don’t have time to locate it right now.
John S–As I’ve commented here many times over the years, from the studies I’ve looked at–particularly well designed studies involving thousands of subjects who were studied, periodically tested and evaluated, and followed for many years or even a couple of decades–marijuana is not a “harmless” drug at all.
The use of marijuana, particularly it’s heavy use in the years before say, 18 years of age, leads to effects like significant and permanent I.Q. loss, and it increases your chances of suffering “cognitive decline, ” as well as from a number of serious mental illnesses.
I know that States which have legalized marijuana see dollar signs and let themselves be seduced into buying some sort of “freedom” argument, but, if you value your mental health and your future, marijuana is not something to ingest.
Funny, too, how more and more states which have legalized marijuana are finding more and more erratic,”impaired, ” and dangerous drivers on their roads with marijuana in their personal possession or in their cars.
If the reports are correct, Card was a range officer (not a rank, but title) and arms instructor in the Reserves. I don’t know his regular service history (yet) but his position in the Reserve would have given him access to firearms. Either from the Army or through connections. No “red flag “ or any gun control law could have stopped him from getting a weapon. Also the death toll was so high because he knew what he was doing. Most spree killers don’t. This lack of knowledge has kept the number of people killed during these events fairly low. The Vegas killer could have legally brought a belt fed machine gun (having the money and clean criminal history) and the number of victims would have been much, much higher. Sometimes ignorance actually protects us.
neo–I believe that patient compliance in taking prescribed medicines is quite low.
Looking at recent articles featuring statistics on noncompliance rates for prescription drugs I see figures as high as 40% noncompliance, and, in particular, for psychiatric drugs the statistic is 40% to 50% or more noncompliance.
JFM.
You can get a weapon if the guy in charge of the arms room feels like it. You, in effect, sign for it. In my time, you left your “weapons card” in the slot from which the weapon was taken.
It’s possible the range officer is also in charge of the arms room. On active duty bases, the arms rooms are near the quarters and the ranges are out in the country. It’s inconvenient for one guy to cover both.
In the reserve component, the ranges are usually available during your two weeks’ annual training at an active training base. The weapons may, depending, be on hand close to home the rest of the year. There are other arrangements. But the bottom line is that Card is not likely to have gotten a military weapon and logically expected to get away with it.
So either he didn’t care…or he got himself a semi-auto at a retail shop or from a friend. Might get away with it for a bit longer.
If he’d had a mil grade weapon, it would have had a “burst” function, which is to say that you fire single shots or you select for a three-shot burst with one trigger pull. No full auto any longer.
Like to know if there were reports of burst fire.
I’ve never been to Maine, but I know that the state has been allowing large numbers Somalian ‘refugees’ to settle in Lewiston.
I’ve been watching Fox News and they have had hours of coverage of the search for the shooter. Not one of them will mention the fact that the culture of Maine and particularly Lewiston is being disrupted by mass immigration.
I’m not saying that a massacre is an acceptable response to your township being overrun by an alien culture, but our legislature is allowing for that to happen.
Let Maine be Maine. There is no reason for Somalians to be there in large numbers.
Erronius
not_a_lawyer:
In this case the crime really seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with Somalians in Lewiston, and what’s more the perp lived in Bowdoin, which has a very different demographic.