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.”
With his legally purchased, semi-automatic rifle.
Isn’t it fascinating that we don’t seem to have any trouble using laws to keep landmines, grenades and high explosives out of the hands of domestic terrorists, but the moment it happens to threaten the hobby of middle aged white men and the profits of the gun lobby, laws are somehow powerless?
He was in the national guard. He probably also had a weapon issued to him by the military. What are you trying to say here?