The suspect is believed to be Robert Card, a 20-year US Army veteran from Bowdoin Center, Maine.
(according to Telegrams so take with grain of salt)
EDIT: Name confirmed by news.
According to law enforcement, CARD recently reported mental health issues to include hearing voices and threats to shoot up the National Guard Base in Saco, ME.
‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
The way I see it, the ship sailed on preventing mass shootings in the US with either Sandy Hook or Columbine. The shock of children being butchered gave way to The Discourse (TM) and now a large proportion of the population just accept shootings as a fact of life like car crashes.
Add to that the sheer number of guns in the US, as well as the gun-related brain rot in the general population, you'd need a campaign of concerted government action that would make the war against drugs look like child's play.
The American obsession with guns goes deep, all the way to the very conception of being American. The country was founded on a settler colonial fantasy of exploring a new (to Europe) frontier, and the actual settlers had to be quite self-reliant, often living in very remote areas in challenging climes. On top of the settler-colonialism, there grew a strong identity of self reliance and rejection/independence of society. I think some early American settlers were really self-reliant, having acquired their own means of production and in fact not needing to interact much with society. Of course, the majority of Americans were urbanites from the beginning. Yet, the idea of the frontier was always prominently in mind and cited proudly by all Americans regardless of their actual lifestyle.
I will gloss over a lot of American history and simply state that augmenting the national military with state militias made sense both before and after the American Revolution, so it is not surprising that a limit was put in place (the 2nd amendment) to prevent the federal government from monopolizing access to guns. But this was in large part a consideration of the rights of state governments vis-a-vis the federal government, in terms of their own established militias which already existed, not necessarily for random joes to open-carry in their local Walmart.
That is some historical context for the early link between gun ownership and American patriotism ... the question remains, why has it stuck around even to the modern day, when the vast majority of Americans were born here and live in urban cities far away from any "frontier"?
I think that question is the one most people, especially non-Americans focus on. Clearly it is the result of a concerted propaganda effort on the part of the US military/Hollywood, and in recent decades, the Republican Party and NRA. They have morphed the existing frontier mindset into something somewhat new and more abstract, a generic anti-authoritarianism in which the gun owner no longer defends against a specific foe like nature or "savages" or the British, but organized society in general, which they blame for eliminating the Wild West which they so desperately wish still existed in order to live out their settler-colonial fantasy. (See also: Westworld)
Didn't expect to write this much, but my point is basically that it will take a lot more than solving material conditions of poverty to eliminate the backward gun culture in America. Like @Tankiedesantski@hexbear.net said, it'll take a concerted re-education effort to undo decades or centuries of propaganda about American culture itself and what it is to be American.
I agree completely. Just compare america's reaction to continuous mass shootings to that of Canada or Australia. The massacres at Ecole Polytechnique and Port Stanley led to sweeping changes in gun legislation in both countries, while Columbine, Sandy Hook, Uvalde, Virginia Tech, etc have led to basically nothing being done to curb the endless stream of mass shooters. Now I'll leave discussion about firearm legislation for another time, but I can't help but think a basic screening system along with mandatory firearm safety training if someone wants to own firearms goes a long way to reducing gun violence. Of course there are issues with how that sort of thing is implemented and who ends up being approved (
), and I don't see a realistic way to implement buybacks/confiscations/licensing program without 
exacerbating the whole situation and leading to even more mass shootings
There were no initial signs of terrorism.
The not-terrorism/terrorism scale really is
. The article was mentioning that this one event is close to being over the total number of murders in the state for all of 2022.Dudes twitter was shared on reddit, of course he was a Republican and also a transphobe. But then i refreshed and the account was "suspended."
https://twitter.com/RobertC20041800/with_replies?t=F8McyP5jkWQqNIzeeIVFzQ&s=09
totally no motive at all.
although one tweet he liked was one from Ravens QB Lamar Jackson about mental health awareness. so much for that.
Cis guy concerned about trans mass shooter becomes a mass shooter. Ok.
Second comment in the thread is saying it's usually crazy Trans people doing the shooting and none of those likes have anything to do with him being the shooter.
R/stormfront just grooving
How broken does your brain have to be to believe that its "usually crazy trans people" after decades of it usually being white cis men.
I find it hard to understand how someone can shoot about 100 people but police still haven't been to catch him yet. Maybe the vast emptiness of the suburban hellscape that makes it possible.
It's very beautiful. I hope they continue to keep the trees around.
Maine is the most wooded US state. Locally, we actually consider Lewiston to be pretty ugly.
If the streets weren't completely and totally straight I would say this looks like a small british town.
pigs don't protect and serve
they just deflect and swerve
and then project with nerve
Having lived in Lewiston a long time, I can tell you the cops there are all totally incompetent. They're not even murderous psychos that big city police forces hire. Just total dumbasses riding around eating donuts 50 hours a week. The police station is like a five minute drive from where this guy started shooting.
If you drive twenty minutes in any direction it's all woods and camps though. A helicopter can't do shit, there's no surveillance cameras, and very few people to call in tips.
Cops have to drive 10 minutes to leave a neighborhood at the only exit while a criminal can jump over some fences and flee the neighborhood in like 45 seconds
threats to shoot up the National Guard Base
Schemengees Bar & Grille
if only his GPS didn't malfunction
Yea clearly sane enough to realize people at the base might shoot back so went with youth league night at a local bowling alley.
At least we can take solace in the fact absolutely nothing will be done about this and the exact same thing could happen again next week.
Weird how these reactionary adventurist freaks only ever hit soft targets
This is a very active and dynamic situation. The image of at least one active killer has been released by police. He is armed with a tactical rifle.
Oh fuck, the shooter is still at large? I can easily imagine this getting worse as people go out to try and find the shooter.
as people go out to try and find the shooter.
Nobody is going to do that
it’s often pointed out that a lot of these guys have npd, which, yeah I buy that, but if npd was the driving factor this would be happening everywhere on earth, or at least everywhere with a lot of guns. What America also has is the diseased atmosphere of a crumbling, self-aggrandizing racist superpower where various segments of society are scapegoated for it crumbling, and you don’t get that in the news or in Psychology Today.
That reminds me of how upset I am that Cluster B personality disorders are currently the internet's acceptable punching bags, NPD in particular. I'm extremely close with one person who has NPD, and on good terms with another who's adjacent to my friend circle. And with those two people, I don't see the psychotic monsters that people online scream about. I see two people in extreme pain and living in constant fear that they're not good enough, that people hate them for their weakness and failures, that they need to be better and do better and that they'll never be enough and no matter what they do the nagging, judging voice in their head will never ever ever shut the fuck up and leave them alone
This isn't to say that some people with NPD aren't extreme assholes. But it's not at all a 1 to 1 ratio. It's not "asshole personality disorder". Not all sociopaths are evil serial killers, not all people with BPD are scheming demons, and not all people with NPD are arrogant shitheads.
I want to effortpost about this someday, tbh. It deserves its own thread. Over the course of my own life, I've come to realize that almost every stereotype about other groups of people is just wrong. Trans people aren't at all as they exist in the popular imagination. Neither is ADHD, nor autism. I've found out about all three of those firsthand. And this is absolutely true for every other group of people.
Same. I have a friend with ASPD and people tend to call anyone that commits attrocities "sociopaths" or "psychopaths", even though it doesn't take ASPD to do bad things. The thought of my friend being associated with pure evilness is pretty infuriating, but I wonder how they must feel.
I think people use cluster B personnality disorders as a scapegoat so that they can detatch themselves from people that did bad things. They tell themselves "That person did something awful, there's no way they wouldn't do that unless they are a narcissit/psychopath", ignoring that people that don't have cluster B disorders can do the same, and further demonise those in cluster B.
i'd be really interested in that effort post. I've wondered a few times if I have npd, in addition to being a bit on the autism spectrum and adhd. The latter two has online support, the first one only has forums for victims of the really bad cases, zero resources for anyone who might be wondering about it. Its basically inconceivable that someone with NPD might wish they didn't have it, or at least understand it enough to be in control.
If you've ever wondered whether you meet the formal diagnostic criteria for narcissism causing impairment to your life to the point where it is a full fledged personality disorder - congratulations - you now no longer meet the diagnostic criteria for narcissism.
What a fun Catch 22.
On to digging deeper into my brain to figure out why I am the way I am.
i'd be really interested in that effort post
I'll add it to the list of posts I want to make
The matter-of-fact tone the users there use always made me uncomfortable.
It doesn't feel productive.
but if [INSERT MI HERE] was the driving factor this would be happening everywhere on earth, or at least everywhere with a lot of guns.
I always point this out when these incidences come up. We can't talk about mental illness if we don't address that this only seems to happen to a very particular set of men. Jumping immediately to blaming mental illness stigmatizes neurodivergence everywhere, and the cultural
chudeology 
gets off the hook every time!Of course, you'll never see narcissism demonized the way autism was because according to CHUDS, narcissistic personality disorder is a "cool" mental disorder and therefore not really a mental issue.
Hey, don't look at me. Reddit was the one that romanticized dark core personality traits.
I wish I was spouting bullshit.
You can’t convince me this isn’t some strategy of tension shit. Like other mass shootings are obviously just pissed of crackers or incels who the police refuse to investigate despite being reported.
But this. This guy was mentally ill but somehow still allowed to be trained with military weapons and train other soldiers. And he was released without being fired, reportedly. And this shooting lasted several hours, and now he’s missing?
none of those circumstances are beyond America's baseline level of not giving a shit about people
pissed of crackers or incels who the police refuse to investigate despite being reported.
How is that not explicitly the exact situation in this case?
You see it. These spree shooters are just part of domestic Gladio. Totally a complete coincidence this happened right when Palestinian protests are popping off. Yep, there's no deeper connection or broader context. It's all due to "guns" or "mental health."
Totally a complete coincidence this happened right when Palestinian protests are popping off.
Come now, it happens all the time anyway, which I think could be used for making a more useful analysis than this conspiracy shit. Making an environment where this happens all the time means there will always be a new atrocity to distract from ongoing popular movements and make any left wing opposition to the dems look bad as though the dems are doing shit about this anyway.
We're up to an average of 1-2 a day now, though; but formal statistics are explicitly legally prohibited from being gathered and compiled because pediatricians tried to turn it into a public health issue several decades ago.
You would not fucking believe how many toddlers find their dad's "unloaded" pistol, please do not ask me how many times a year I am rewarded for my poor life and career choices by being reminded of this
A lone wolf incident then. No radicalization or extremist ideology this time around.
And he was known to the authorities, but they declared him a good fella and let him go
Firearms instructor for the army so yea clearly wasn't radicalized by terrorists. No siree.
Gun laws in Maine, they seem pretty lax. https://www.nraila.org/gun-laws/state-gun-laws/maine/
Open carry allowed with no permit, and it's a "castle doctrine" state.
Where's all the good people with guns?
Yeah all states have some form, and Maine is one of the more (relatively) sensible ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine?wprov=sfti1#State-by-state_positions_in_the_United_States
Firearms aren't allowed in places that serve alcohol up here. Also very few people actually carry, even less so in our urban areas.
The only people allowed to own guns are communists, and it's a Kalashnikov provided by the state.
The only people alloqed to own guns is me and i make them have little personalities and dance around
Reform our society so that people's needs are met and it's not a pressure cooker of misery.
Or design guns for babies and small children.
Reform our society so that people's needs are met and it's not a pressure cooker of misery.
Sounds unamerican
Or design guns for babies and small children.
Good news! There's the JR-15 (their website was down lmao)!
Almost like you shouldn't let people with genocidal ideologies have guns
Or people who have been convicted of domestic violence.
Or committed for saying voices in their head were telling them to shoot people.
All of which are true for this guy.
Everyone's "tough on crime" until we start talking about disarming as a punishment for being a criminal.
Give it five years and you'll see mass shooting be reclassified as a white collar crime, and therefore not even be punished because it somehow gets protected as "free speech".
Wtf you mean "will be reclassified," they magically somehow always take the shooter into alive if they're white and didn't 4chan themselves
New topic - Epstein's mass casualty event simulation training center for youths in rural New Mexico
The leftist version is "everyone is for prison abolition until they see a story like this."
If this guy shouldn't have guns, what's the mechanism for taking them away?
firearms instructor
army reservist
The mythical "good guy with a gun" to fashoids, checks all the boxes and yet here he is shooting people in the back at a youth bowling league.
Apparently he wasn't a firearms instructor. At least thats what I heard on the news an hour ago.
Sometimes news stories will confuse instructors and range officers. Instructors are supposed to teach you something, ros are supposed to be the people who pay attention to what’s going on and make sure everything’s safe/legal.
This is just going to keep happening over and over and over again. It's always a tragedy but never a surprise.
Let me guess, mental illness?
Also, only a matter of time until we learn they were on the FBI’s radar
Preliminary reporting seems to suggest that it might actually be a mental illness thing. They reported to superiors that they were hearing voices and were discharged without any restriction on owning high caliber firearms.
They reported to superiors that they were hearing voices and were discharged without any restriction on owning high caliber firearms
GEE, IF ONLY SOMETHING COULD’VE BEEN DONE ABOUT SUCH AN UNPREVENTABLE TRAGEDY Only in the army would nobody question the assumption that hearing voices automatically translates into always doing everything the voices tell you to do
That's an understatement
He has a written record of telling people voices in his head were telling him to shoot up the army base.
Hmm wonder if something about the US army causes people to mentally deteriorate
Being told to kill whatever looks at you funny might be detrimental to one’s mind idk tho
I wonder if structurally stripping away someone's individuality and personality to make it easier to mold them into an unthinking murderer has any wider implications
: "No bad tactics, only bad targets."
