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 problem is that the “assault weapon” wording makes it easier for pro gun to dismiss you. The US has a lot of people obsessed with guns. I’d love if the US could just ban guns entirely, but reality is that we’d have to at least start with reasonable baby steps and cannot give them any easy way to get out. By using the “assault weapon” wording, you’re just making it easier for them to dismiss gun legislation cause they’ll claim “it’s too vague” (even if it’s not).
It’s unfortunate that wording has to matter so much, especially in colloquial usage, but it’s such an uphill battle to get even the slightest gun restrictions in place, so we sadly do need to be perfect. And yeah, it’s stupid. It’s dumb that the US can be like it is and people will still defend their guns to the death. But we have to account for that if we want to make anything better.
If they’re dismissive, they would never support it anyway. Don’t cater to people who won’t support you no matter what you do.