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.”
Unfortunately as long as republicans are in office no real gun control will ever happen.
That’s what the lobby pays them for.
I’m sure it has nothing at all to do with the base.
Sure, they sweeten the deal. There is no horror nor humiliation they won’t endure as long as they get to keep their guns.
But the neoliberal Republicans would sell them out in a heartbeat if that was more profitable.
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Arguably, blue team focusing on ineffective attempts to address symptoms by infringing upon rights to the neglect of attempts to address root issues is more responsible for the lack of improvement.
We aren’t going to see any form of legislative change until both parties come to the table. That isn’t going to happen until blue team is willing to abandon their bullshit and offer some form of compromise or olive branch in exchange for support from red team on the necessary spending measures.
Blue team could totally invert the NRA propaganda and messaging here, using it to their advantage and defanging what is unquestionably a Republican fundraising machine, by “championing firearm rights” (flavor it however) and offering up deregulation of suppressors, SBRs, etc, a road to legit select fire ownership, so on, in exchange for support on measures like funding for these resources, overhaul of ERPOs, shall-issue licensing with free and equitable training, etc.
They choose not to.