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.”
The black market might expand, but that’s one more deterrent for new attackers. However, the issue is that in the US alone there are something like 300million guns already in circulation or owner by private individuals. So a buyback program would need to happen as well and I don’t know how realistic that is. We’ve had mass shootings for decades and this government can’t do shit about anything any more as all bipartisan good will has completely evaporated and the discourse has become so toxic.
We continue to have mass shootings because they’re a problem with common root issues we continue to ignore.
That said, there is a strong discrepancy between the occurrences of mass shootings and the amount of media coverage and sensationalism they get compared to every other form of violence and murder and related media attention. This has become a wedge issue useful for partisan polarization nothing more - I don’t have any faith this will ever meaningfully improve simply because blue team would have to abandon their high horse on this and cede a wedge issue, which they’ll never do.