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.”
Why is this so down voted? I'm seriously asking?
Are the people down voting disagreeing that mentally stable people generally don't go around shooting up public spaces?
Edit: Jesus was just asking, down voting doesn't help anyone who was confused as I was.
To everyone explaining the issue here thank you I get it now.
Because he's arguing in bad faith. He's removing blame from the ease of access to guns in a disingenuous, JAQing off way.
It really bugs me when people do stuff like that… I grew up in VT, where laws are lax, tons of people have guns, and nothing ever happens. Responsibly handled and in the hands of a stable person, guns can be pretty safe - but, if you remove either one of those things, they're incredibly dangerous.
In light of that, I wouldn't mind if access were restricted somewhat. I'm totally fine with my neighbor having a rifle to kill varmints on their property, but way less fine with folks like my paranoid uncle having a safe full of assault rifles and thousands of rounds of ammo in a densely populated suburb.
In the civilized world, you have to justify your need for a gun with the presence of the aforementioned varmints. No yard, no varmints, no gun.
No one needs a machine gun to hunt deer, and no one needs a handgun. Handguns are lousy for self defense ("buy a shotgun", to quote the President). All they're good for is killing humans and making gun shareholders richer.
And no gun is going to help you if the government comes for you either. The cops are coming with tear gas, body armor, and tanks, and most importantly there's no amount of cops you can kill that will get them to leave you alone.
All of the justifiable bases for having a gun are solved with a double barrel shotgun. Even if you're being mauled by a bear, if two rounds of buckshot don't stop it, you weren't gonna make it anyway.
License shotguns like cars and get rid of everything else. "Only criminals will have guns!" That's what your shotgun is for. And if the criminals are getting locked up for having mobile armories, even better. We can replace the current prison population of black drug users with actual gangsters.
so gun ownership should only be allowed for people who own property?
Yes, and while we're at it, yes to any other bad faith strawman argument you've got. GTFO with that bullshit.
Fuck that. We can talk about giving up our guns when the cops and government give up theirs
Amen to that.
Good luck fighting off Pentagon drones with your hobby weapon.
Maine and Vermont has similar gun ownership rates and death by gun statistics.
"nothing ever happens" until it happens. then it's all "how could this have happened" 🤷♀️
you only need an air rifle for killing varmints, AR-15 is designed for killing people.
That statement came across as the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument that is used against gun control, saying that it makes no sense to restrict guns when it's the person using the gun who decides to kill, and if that person is motivated enough they can do damage even without access to firearms, so why bother?
I don't think that's your point at all, but people always reflexively downvote over shit like that.
Gun ownership is a touchy issue to the US population in general. shrugs
Ease of access to firearms is a massive part of the problem, but saying that I will be downvoted even more. Add in the fact there are people having mental issues and breakdowns more than ever, and you can see why mass shootings are increasing.
Simply put, it's not an issue that is going to be solved any time soon, if ever. It is a highly politicized issue, which you can tell by the ferocity of the responses I got to my flippant original comment.
For real, I feel like their comment was literally only about the mental stability of these shooters. That's it. But people read into what isn't there and assume it's a bad faith argument against gun control.