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.”
I appreciate your candid attitude but how many mass shootings have you committed? None? Then how does turning in your guns solve this? The state once again failed to do anything when the perpetrator literally admired to be homicidal. Maybe there are gun problems other times, but this fucking wasnt one of those times
Well it’s both. Having access to such weapons when someone is mentally ill is a bad combination. And having mental health going unchecked just makes it hard to capture the rage.
The fact is this issue is not just the guns or the people. It’s both. And everyone trying to separate them is not understanding the true nature of the problem.