On Wednesday evening, a rifle-toting gunman murdered 18 people and wounded at least 13 more in Lewiston, Maine, when he opened fire at two separate locations—a bowling alley, followed by a bar. A manhunt is still underway for 40-year-old suspect Robert Card, a trained firearms instructor with the U.S. Army Reserve who, just this summer, spent two weeks in a mental hospital after reporting that he was hearing voices and threatening to shoot up a military base.
While the other late-night talk show hosts stuck to poking fun at new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on Thursday night, Stephen Colbert took his rebuke of the Louisiana congressman to a whole other level.
“Now, we know the arguments,” Colbert said of the do-nothing response politicians generally have to tragedies such as this. “Some people are going to say this is a mental health issue. Others are going to say it’s a gun issue. But there’s no reason it can’t be both.”
There are few indicators of unseriousness as effective as this particular dog-whistle.
It’s as if you’re unaware military firearms are to the minimum specs and by the lowest bidder; that almost every civilian firearm is superior in all aspects except presence of select-fire capability.
The Colt 1911 handgun is a weapon of war despite being one of the most fickle widely available handguns known, surpassed and outclassed in every way by your modern striker-fired 9mm handgun.
This delineation is meaningless. Might as well call mess hall mashed potatoes food of war as if it mattered.
Have you considered reducing the count of crazy people at all? Say, providing affordable and quality treatment options without restrictions and stigma for seeking help?