Lewiston shooting suspect found dead, law enforcement officials say
Lewiston shooting suspect found dead, law enforcement officials say
Follow NBC News' coverage for live updates and developments about the shootings in Lewiston, Maine, that killed at least 18 people.
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Fuck all the people who saw the signs but did nothing.
This could have been avoided.
Yeah, some common sense gun laws would have helped. People hearing voices should not have guns in their possession.
The moment he threatened a military base, he should have been locked up and getting treatment.
Already a law in Maine. They have a yellow flag law to stop this. We can’t go around knocking on every gun owner’s door and asking g if they hear voices.
https://legislature.maine.gov/statutes/34-B/title34-Bsec3862-A.html
The thing is, he was a prime candidate to fall under the Yellow Flag law with the threats he made.
The police didn't do their job and invoke it.
The problem was, when he made the threats, he was in New York. He was committed for 2 weeks in New York. Maine's yellow flag law had no jurisdiction.
New York has a red flag law, but his home and guns were in Maine.
We solve this problem with a FEDERAL Red Flag law.
Hey dude I hope you're doing good! I'm just popping in to add in here:
It is actually already a federal law that people who were IVC'd in any state have that reported into NICs and have their guns confiscated. It isn't "red flag laws" specifically which seek to broaden the law we already have (depending on state, with a burden of proof as low as "he said she said" in some cases, always at a secret hearing you aren't allowed to even know about much less defend yourself, and then they may return them 1yr later when you finally do get your day in court if you can prove the negative.)
So, we don't have a red flag law nationally, but we do have 18 U.S.C. § 922(d), [which states:] it is unlawful for any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person “has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution.”
Seems a lot of people (on and off lemmy) aren't aware of this law (which, in this case, would have prevented this had the beaurocrats done their jobs), just figured I'd let y'all know.
That's the problem... the word "adjudicated". Unless it goes through a judge, the guns are NOT confiscated and it does not show up on a background check.
So the Maine shooter was held, it didn't go through a judge, was not "adjudicated".
Same for Jacksonville:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Jacksonville_shooting"In 2017, he was the subject of a Baker Act call, used to place persons under involuntary detainment for mental health examination for up to 72 hours.[6]"
Same for Allen, Texas:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Allen,_Texas_mall_shooting"Garcia was then enlisted in the U.S. Army in June 2008, but he never completed basic training: he was terminated after three months due to mental health concerns.[39][40] Because this was an administrative separation, rather than a punitive discharge, Garcia's termination by the Army would not show up on the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.[41]"
Ah, I see. To me that isn't necessarily a bad thing though, to require some proof before removal of one's rights. If anyone can just say "my ex said X" then what is stopping people from abusing that? Right wingers calling it in on trans people who are trying to protect themselves from right wing violence for instance, or an abusive ex having his ex-wife's guns taken so he can go hurt her, something like that. I personally believe it should require at least some proof that would hold up in court. I'm also not a huge fan of the whole "Take the guns first, due process second" approach that Trump supported with the red flag law secret hearings business, I think that if someone is making verifiable threats, you should be able to charge them with that in a normal, non-secret hearing, leading to the adjucated IVC, removal of rights, flagged in NICs, etc.
I think there is a way that we could all agree on, gun rights supporters and realistic gun control supporters alike (the no-guns crowd aside). Something like actually sending these people through a judge in a timely manner oughta at least be a step in the right direction.
Yeah, it's not that rights should be taken away without going through a judge, it's that more things NEED to go through judges to create the appropriate disqualifying paper trail.
I'd argue too that we need to expand what is a disqualifying event. If you look at the Michigan State shooter, he had been arrested on a felony gun charge, allowed to plead down to a misdemeanor, did his time, then when his background check was clear, he bought another gun, and here we are.
Should we allow people to plead down from felony to misdemeanor when the charge involves guns? A felony charge would have blocked him from buying a gun.
Maybe, when it comes to gun charges, a misdemeanor should also be a disqualifier? Right now it's only felony charges, but if someone has already proven they can't be trusted around a gun...
My only concern there comes from another opinion I have "A lot of shit that is a felony should be a misdemeanor, and a lot of shit that is a misdemeanor shouldn't even be a crime."
I'll need to look to see his specific charge, but off the top of my head I can think of two "gun charges" that should at least be misdemeanors if crimes at all.
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CCW without a permit. IMO this should be a misdemeanor at best. Hell, about half of the states no longer require one, they certianly aren't necessary even if they're a good idea. I also posit that if voter ID laws are racist because black people can't get state IDs easily, CCW permits are the same (and also sometimes subject to sherriff approval and can be abused outright by a racist sherriff easily if you're in a shit county.) These laws typically do impact marginalized neighborhoods rather than gated communities, as the poor are more likely to work saturdays (when they have the classes), not be able to afford the 100+ dollar fee, etc.
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Having guns and illegal drugs. Frankly, I don't think this should be a crime at all. "I believe gay married couples should be free to defend their marijuana farms with AR15s." Now, if they're using the guns to steal for drugs, well now they're committing real crimes (robbery) and we absolutely lock them up, but simply "yes I smoke weed and yes I will protect myself shall you try to kill me" should not even be a crime.
Brandishing or something with an actual victim I 100% agree though. Like I said idk what his specific gun crime was I have to look it up when I get a sec.
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Except HE reported having heard voices and threatened to shoot up a military base. No knocking required, the police knew and did nothing
The police don’t do shit when they hear children screaming and dying. They’re not gonna do shit about this.
Here's the scariest Supreme Court decision you'll read today:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1525280/
"In a 7–2 opinion, the Supreme Court ruled that due process principles did not create a constitutional right to police protection, despite the existence of a court-issued restraining order."
No, but you can ask anyone that checks in to a ward saying their hearing voices if they have guns.
Sounds foolproof. People being involuntarily committed never lie to the people locking them up!
Too bad there's no way to find out if they have guns like, for example, looking to see if they have guns. But that would be impossible.
why not
We could enact a law that would have people take a yearly gun safety course which includes a psychological assessment to determine their fitness for gun ownership. Failure to comply would start a process for gun confiscation by the state. Failure to provide proof of completion would result in a $10,000 fine and confiscation of guns on the person and on their property.
Yeah here's me not wanting a gun for myself because I sleep walk. How is it that people with dangerous mental disorders can just get whatever they want?
"common sense gun law" is meaningless
Nah, this blood, as with almost all mass shootings, is completely on the 2A people as far as I'm concerned.
Australia cleaned up their act in response to mass tragedy. Our society just isn't a society.
That would require some degree of cooperation and sacrifice. Modern Americans just don't have those qualities in us.
This is what our people have chosen to be.
yep i realized this when a room full of dead 6 year olds wasnt enough for the 2a people to realize real people are dying for their fake security. ive lost hope
We can't do what Australia did. 2nd Amendment aside (and that alone is a huge blocker), we have a much larger population and a much larger inventory.
Australia confiscated 650,000 guns on a population at the time of around 18 million people. Even that was only 20% of the guns in the country.
https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback
The United States has a population over 330 million with over 400 million guns.
20% of 400 million would be 80 million guns. To take those off the street, we would have to run the equivalent of the Australian program 123 times.
Logistically, it's impossible. Even without the 2nd amendment we don't have the capacity to do it. There's no way to collect and dispose of them.
Who says this has to be done in a day? Have gun drop off places which keeps lists, destroy the guns (weld the muzzle or drill in a hole both can be done in 2minutes for a single gun) and then sell them to scrapyards. People have time until the end of 2024.
The Australian plan did take a year, October 1996 to September 1997, and all they got was 650,000 guns which was 20%.
Americans first, have no obligation to give up their guns thanks to the 2nd Amendment and second, aren't as likely to give up their guns.
You aren't getting 80 million (20%) even in a year, and again, we don't have the capacity to collect and dispose of them.
80 million / 50 (yeah, I know, it won't be an even distribution, but let's work the math roughly) 1.6 million per state / 12 months = 133,333 a month per state.
The Australian plan took 12 months to collect 650,000. So the US would need to meet that in about 5 states in one month.
The most successful gun buyback in US history collected 4,200 guns across 4 buybacks.
https://www.hcp1.net/GunBuyback
The Australian plan cannot work here.
I mean, you're throwing out a lot of numbers claiming it is impossible, but we have logistics and resources that Australia didn't in 1996. If Amazon can deliver 7.7 billion packages a year, and the US can count 150 million votes in a week during election season, we can figure out how to break down 400 million guns over a month, a year, or a decade. It doesn't have to happen overnight. The "Australian plan" doesn't have to work here, but getting guns off the street somehow does.
I guarantee you don't want a private company like Amazon handling gun confiscation, public policy should not be up to private companies to enforce. Might as well ask people to drop off their guns at the local WalMart and ask untrained staff to deal with them. No good will come from it.
Elections are a different deal because all you're processing is bits of paper and data, you aren't running the risk of, you know, explosive ordinance.
Even if we had the logistics, which we don't, there's still the 2nd amendment to contend with. We can't force people to give up their guns, that's a right the Australians didn't have.
Repealing the 2nd Amendment can be done, but it starts with 290 votes in the House. You did watch the struggle it took to get the 217 they needed to elect their own leader, right?
I didn't suggest Amazon run the process. I just meant "logistics infrastructure exists on a scale unimaginable in 1996". 600 million COVID doses given out in the US might have been a better comparison. Or 7.2 billion packages by USPS in 2022. There are 708k cops in the US. That's 2 guns recovered per cop per month to have it done in 90 days.
There is literally no argument in the world where "the logistics make it impossible" is a reasonable claim.
Likewise, "we'll never get 290 votes" is a lazy and cowardly claim. Yes, it'll be hard. Yes, it'll be a fight. Yes, we'll have some minds that will be impossible to change. But your apparent argument in defense of gun rights seems to be "aww, jeez, it seems pretty tricky" which is truly mind boggling to me.
It's not that it will be hard, it's that this is the same body that took 22 days to build a simple majority to decide who their own leader is. 290 is out of reach.
That same speaker, BTW, has already said he won't allow gun issues to come to the floor.
The Republicans will not vote for it, which is the majority. Some Democrats won't vote for it either. It's a dead issue.
mate the gun buyback was only the start. we also completely overhauled laws making it incredibly difficult to buy a gun in the first place. a gun amnesty has been in place since and I think is still in place today (you can walk into a copshop, hand over your gun and all is good). Of course it will take time, but claiming it's impossible is just not remotely correct. mass disposals, collection bins. and it's not like all 400m will be or need to be collected, there will always be legitimate uses for certain types of guns as there is anywhere in the world, but every suburban Bob doesn't need an armoury for "defence".
The only block you have is culture. Fix that, then your constitution can be fixed, then the physical act of reducing guns in circulation commences. if it takes a generation to remove the vast majority of unnecessary weapons it's time well spent. your kids and/or grand kids might have a chance to go to school without the threat of being blown away, but only if you want to change
It's not culture, it's repeated Supreme Court rulings since 2008.
Lots of cited sources below, but the tl;dr is you can't ban entire classes of weapons, you can't require militia membership, everyone has the right to defend themselves and requiring guns be locked up or disassembled defeats that right, the 2nd amendment is not limited to the weapons extant at the time of passing, and states can't place special restrictions on ownership or possession.
Now, could all that change? Sure, this court did strike down Roe vs. Wade after all... it just took 50 years to swing the court the other direction. So maybe by 2073?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
"(1) The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Pp. 2–53."
and further:
"(3) The handgun ban and the trigger-lock requirement (as applied to self-defense) violate the Second Amendment. The District's total ban on handgun possession in the home amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of "arms" that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense. Under any of the standards of scrutiny the Court has applied to enumerated constitutional rights, this prohibition – in the place where the importance of the lawful defense of self, family, and property is most acute – would fail constitutional muster. Similarly, the requirement that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional."
Because that was decided against Washington D.C. and not an actual state, there was a 2nd ruling making it clear that this applies to states as well:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald_v._City_of_Chicago
""the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense" (id. at ___, 130 S. Ct. at 3026); that "individual self-defense is 'the central component' of the Second Amendment right" (emphasis in original) (id. at ___, 130 S. Ct. at 3036 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 599)); and that "[s]elf-defense is a basic right, recognized by many legal systems from ancient times to the present day" (id. at ___, 130 S. Ct. at 3036).[21]"
2016 had my favorite ruling in all this because it wouldn't INITIALLY seem to deal with guns. A woman bought a taser to protect herself from an abusive ex. MA ruled the 2nd amendment didn't apply because tasers didn't exist when the 2nd amendment was written.
Enter the Supreme Court:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caetano_v._Massachusetts
"the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding" and that "the Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the States".[6] The term "bearable arms" was defined in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) and includes any ""[w]eapo[n] of offence" or "thing that a man wears for his defence, or takes into his hands," that is "carr[ied] . . . for the purpose of offensive or defensive action." 554 U. S., at 581, 584 (internal quotation marks omitted)."[10]
The most recent is the New York ruling where you needed special permission from the state to get a concealed carry permit, which was often denied, even if you were a law abiding gun owner.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Rifle_%26_Pistol_Association,_Inc._v._Bruen
"The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not 'a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.' We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need."[28]
Where this ruling is especially different is that it sets the grounds for striking down other, in place, gun laws all over the country:
"When the Second Amendment's plain text covers an individual's conduct [here the right to bear arms], the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only then may a court conclude that the individual's conduct falls outside the Second Amendment's "'unqualified command.'"
bruh your constitution isn't some holy scripture handed down from heaven in some perfect form. why do you think "ammendments" happened in the first place? they are a legal expression of your cultures appetite for what your country stands for, and can be changed.
you guys (as a whole) don't want it to.
ergo, its cultural
The amendments are there because a 2/3rds vote of the House and Senate voted for them and 3/4 of the states ratified them. Until a similar vote un-does them, they are the law of the land.
so why doesn't another vote undo them? oh that's right, the fucked up gun culture
Another vote won't undo them because we're too polarized as a nation.
Republicans won't support an amendment proposed by Democrats purely because Democrats propose it.
They also won't propose their own because, like you say, gun culture.
OTOH - Republicans ARE (oddly) down for throwing out the ENTIRE constitution and re-doing it. The process is calling for a Constitutional Convention and currently there are 28 of the necessary 34 states down for doing this. https://www.commoncause.org/our-work/constitution-courts-and-democracy-issues/article-v-convention/#
The problem here is once they get the 34 states on board, and write a new Constitution, they need 38 states to ratify the new Constitution.
As a bonus, because this drive is coming from the right, any new Constitution is going to be filled with poison pills that the Democratic states will never support (banning corporate taxes, outlawing abortion, restricting voting rights, and expanded gun rights).
You guys put people on the moon in the 60s. You sure as hell can sort this out with enough will power and time. But instead all you offer are excuses.
We haven't been to the moon since 1972 and don't even have our own shuttle program anymore. Our bridges and roads are falling apart, we have absolutely no plan for climate change, and this ass-hat is speaker of the House of Representatives:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/speaker-mike-johnson-legislation-house-agenda/
But here's the crux of the problem that folks outside the US don't get:
The right to own a gun is guaranteed in our founding document. It doesn't matter if you agree it should be or not, it's there and it's been upheld by the Supreme Court multiple times.
We could amend the Constitution again... but doing so starts in the House and takes 290 votes.
They took 22 days to get a simple 217 vote majority to decide who their own Speaker would be, there's no WAY they get 290 votes on removing the 2nd Amendment.
But let's say some miracle happens and we get 290, now it goes to the Senate where we need 67 votes. Same problem, the Senate is incapacitated by a minority who require 60 votes to do ANYTHING and that hasn't been attainable.
But lets say some billionaire swoops in and pays off enough people to get 67...
Now it goes to the states for ratification and we need 38 states for it to become an amendment.
Look at 2020 as a guide - Biden won 25 states + Washington D.C., Trump won 25 states.
You would need all 25 Biden states to ratify + 13 Trump states. For every Biden state you lose, you need +1 Trump state.
Take a look at the Trump states and count up 13 willing to give up their gun rights...
Logistically, it's impossible. Even without the 2nd amendment we don't have the capacity to do it. There's no way to collect and dispose of them.
Australian here, you know what I hear when this argument gets trotted out?
"I have a yard full of prickles and it really hurts when I step on them but there's just too many prickles to even think about trying to get rid of them. Even just the ones from the front porch to the letterbox. Oh, how it hurts when I step on one! But it's just too hard."
Everything starts with small steps. Start doing the small steps. Otherwise you're just parroting The Onion's seminal news story on gun violence, and they were being sadly satirical.
The most successful gun buyback in US history took 4,200 guns off the street.
https://www.hcp1.net/GunBuyback
399,995,800 to go!
This is why small steps are pointless. We have to change the constitution to take significant steps, but even doing that, gun owners WILL NOT surrender voluntarily.
So now what? We've repealed the 2nd amendment, now we take out the 4th amendment on illegal search and seizure and go house to house searching for guns? Knowing that gun owners are armed and won't give up peacefully?
You want a civil war because that's how you get a civil war.
Again with the, "oh we tried that, it didn't work"
My answer to that is, "try harder".
And all the rest of your extrapolatory bullshit I'll just ignore.
Mass shootings cost your communities so much. Price your buybacks accordingly. Work on your gun laws. Work on fixing your mental health system.
Don't just say, "It's too hard."
That's the thing, they don't work at the volume needed to make a difference.
What happens is 2 things:
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A bunch of inoperable guns get turned in for cash which is then used to buy more guns.
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Gun owners evaluate the cash value of their guns and decline to turn them in since they aren't being paid fair market value.
https://www.thetrace.org/2023/04/do-gun-buybacks-work-research-data/
"The most rigorous studies of gun buyback programs have found little empirical evidence to suggest that they reduce shootings, homicides, or suicides by any significant degree in either the short- or long-term.
This isn’t surprising, experts say. “Even under the assumption of optimal implementation, only a tiny fraction of guns in a given community are going to be turned into gun buyback programs,” Charbonneau said. “It’s unlikely that research using standard statistical methods will be able to identify the causal impact of buybacks on firearm violence.”
An analysis by The Trace earlier this year found that more than 16 million guns were produced for the U.S. market in 2020 alone, and somewhere between 350 and 465 million guns may be in circulation nationwide. Meanwhile, even the most successful gun buyback events collect only a few hundred guns at a time. For example, over a nearly two-decade period, New York City’s gun buyback initiative collected just 10,000 firearms."
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I'm actually mostly on your side, I think the US is too far gone. If you took peoples guns off them in the US, I genuinely think there would be a or several small civil wars.
Further a lot of people would just refuse, hide their guns etc.
If the US actually tried to do what Australia did I think you'd actually see a drop in shootings etc but it would take 50-70 years to actually get through the majority of weapons 'on the street'.
But to say it's logistically impossible is absolutely and completely wrong. It's culturally near impossible.
P.s. I'm Australian and our shooting crimes are going up, pistol numbers are going up too and we have the worst self defence laws. I wish I could have a loaded Glock and the right to shoot an intruder in my home honestly.
Think of like this, your average pistol weighs just over a pound (.45kg) and your average rifle around 8 pounds (3.62kg)
So somewhere between 400 million and 3.2 billion pounds of metal, wood, and plastic. Between 180 million and 1.448 billion kg.
Low number is assuming all pistols, high number is assuming all rifles, so the real number is going to be between the two.
As a point of comparison, the US generates 268 million tons of garbage every year:
https://www.dumpsters.com/blog/us-trash-production
You're talking many times that JUST for guns.
Run some numbers on the amount of weight the US military moves annually.
The US Military is legally prevented from operating inside the United States:
Our society just isn't a society.
Which is why I'd prefer to have a gun
Australia cleaned up their act in response to mass tragedy. Our society just isn’t a society.
Australia didn't have a problem with mass shootings, then they had 1 mass shooting. They banned guns, and continued to not have problems with mass shootings. Doesn't prove anything. In fact they have more guns now than they did pre-ban
The first result on google for 'Australia gun ownership rates':
-Australian civilians now own more than 3.5 million registered firearms, an average of four for each licensed gun owner.
-The proportion of Australians who hold a gun licence has fallen by 48 percent since 1997.
-The proportion of Australian households with a firearm has fallen by 75 percent in recent decades.
-Data indicates that people who already own guns have bought more rather than an increase in new gun owners.
And I don't know much about their mass shooting history, but here's an article explaining that homicides and suicides sharply declined after the ban:
https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback
What they found is a decline in both suicide and homicide rates after the NFA. The average firearm suicide rate in Australia in the seven years after the bill declined by 57 percent compared with the seven years prior. The average firearm homicide rate went down by about 42 percent.
also other countries take shooting to mass shooting more serious where here in murica they dont make the news with under 6 victims
Don't forget the day before he killed people that this was "a good guy with a gun"
They need a red flag/extreme risk protection order (ERPO) law in their state, at the very least. If used, such a law could have prevented this. It's one of the things that Moms Demand Action has been pushing for.
As soon as someone comes in with HI/SI that should trigger a response that removes all weapons from someone's home, a 72 hr psych hold, and informs all immediate friends/family that they are not to be allowed near guns/knives. Period