At least 22 dead and 60 shot in mass shooting Lewiston, Maine

‘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.
- Something that might cut down on it tho would be a robust social safety net. It's pretty easy to get a gun if you really want one in Denmark, yet we don't really have mass shootings - you can get pistols legally here, though its a difficult process. You can get arms illegally relatively easily, if you've got the money. Same goes for other countries.
  Though no other country is so weirdly obsessed about guns as the us is, both in terms of "gotta have em" and also using them? At least it seems like that to me. It's like a totem or a cultural signifier or something. People need to carry them everywhere, and everyone needs to be able to have it. It's fucked up.
  But still, other countries do make weapons available to the public at large (though far from the ease which it is in the us), but mass shootings aren't a thing. Possibly because people aren't as stretched out physically and mentally. That combined with not having gun stores on every street makes a big difference.
- 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
Fucking evergreen

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.

someone on reddit grabbed a screenshot of some of his likes
and some more
- Cis guy concerned about trans mass shooter becomes a mass shooter. Ok.

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.
- Damn, they live like this? (It's very good.)
- Cute little river towns don’t deserve this.
- Wait Lewiston is actually hella pretty
- If the streets weren't completely and totally straight I would say this looks like a small british town.
they taking cover behind elementary school children.
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.
He worked at the base he knew where it was
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
- Reddit might :boston-bomber:

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
Programmed to Kill
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
The mental illness could have manifested after the fact

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.

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!
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.
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.
- ... what ?

looks like another white guy?

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?

On this website, probably
Aren’t most states castle doctrine?
- 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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Liberation_Army
Firearms aren't allowed in places that serve alcohol up here. Also very few people actually carry, even less so in our urban areas.
What’s your solution?
- The only people allowed to own guns are communists, and it's a Kalashnikov provided by the state.
- Three years on this site and nobody ever mentioned This?
- The only people alloqed to own guns is me and i make them have little personalities and dance around
What’s your solution?
- 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.

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?
This is not the time to condemn genocide.

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.
- Probably the guy who runs shooting ranges

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

How many 9/11s is this so I can understand the scale?
- Well under 1. In fact, this article is anti-semitic for distracting the world from Israel's ongoing security issues.
- What a terrible cold way to look at this tragedy. Anyway by my math using state populations it's about 1/10th of a 9/11.
  Edit: if you use cities as the denominator, its about four 9/11s.
- At least 3

Now we wait for more ChatGPT generated thoughts and prayers and the usual "there is just no way to solve this"

Don't forget about all the posts about how this is actually Hamas
- Haven't you heard? Hamas has already infiltrated San Diego! They could already be in Maine...

Gotta admit, it’s the first time I’ve heard of that place since I would listen to this song as a child. The way Fred says “Lewiston Maine” has been deeply wired my neurons and I feel like I just got a nu metal activation code.

Edit: i had forgotten how dog shit this song is, I apologize

Limp Bizkit is bad and this is bad for Limp Bizkit.
- holy shit I don't know if I've ever actually listened to them, that is bbbbbad
Note to self: sample the isolated drum tracks on significant other.
- It’s peak production value over songwriting value. Terry Date was most definitely in his best drum sounds ever era - Digital Bath by The Deftones was the following year, for example
Oh man, it's been so long since I've listened to Limp Bizkit. Lowkey kinda still dig it lmao

According to the article he's actually 40 years old and was recently admitted to a mental health facility for two weeks.

post doesn't mention his age (except his 1983 DOB in the image), just that he was in the military for 20 years

having lived in rural maine, yes the nature was beautiful but socially it was pretty depressing and impoverished, but not a lot happens there so an 80-person mass shooting - I'm both really surprised and not very surprised at the same time :/

An ex-soldier with known mental health issues. But of course he was legal to own a gun.

Do you hear of the daily mass shootings in other (non-war) countries? No? Maybe there is a reason to this.

still on the run apperently ...

Jesus.
- I dont think he can help you now

Makes me think of the Gabriel Wortman shootings in Nova Scotia, middle-aged white guy with a history of violent behavior starts going around shooting people and due to rcmp incompetence (or something more sinister) leads to him being on the run for most of a day while he continues his rampage across Nova Scotia. Wortman wasn't in the military but he did have an obsession with cops and he used his fake cruiser & uniform in his rampage. He was on the run overnight and into the next day before he was found, and that was more luck than police work.

(or something more sinister)
Still mad that Maclean's did a great dive into some weird shit that possibly pointed to him being an RCMP informant for organized crime, and the RCMP's official stance was just "nuh-uh!" and the government refuses to investigate anything about the incident
- If you haven't already I recommend reading the book 22 Murders by Paul Palango. He lays out a lot of the, shall we say, inconsistencies in the rcmp version of events, including when the first 911 calls came in, when they knew it was Wortman and when they knew he was in a cop car and in uniform. He also touches on Wortmans connections not only to cross border smuggling (mainly cigarettes and guns from the states), organized crime, and local law enforcement but two of his victims were prison guards that he had a long association with, and during his rampage he was at their house for hours before burning it to the ground. And yea, tie that all into the lack of a proper inquiry and investigation and the maple gladio lable doesn't seem too far off the mark
That was just a deep undercover cop/mob guy (sorry, I always confuse organized crime with the police, I'm working on it) on a bender though, shit happens all the time.

But where's the good guy with a gun?

"I will never listen to the voices"

Damn Lewiston has a large Somali population right? Is it possible this was racially motivated in some way?

The bar he targeted is where old white guys hang out. The bowling alley's customer base is also predominantly white. Doesn't seem to have been racially motivated.
I live in Maine and that's what I've been thinking (because you are correct), but so far it seems like the shooter didn't deliberately target Somalis.

Any motive yet?

Not yet. White army dude so it's either some guy that america broke yet again or he's a nazi with a manifesto, one or the other.
- What's the difference?

The governor and police announced the toll of 18 dead and 13 wounded this morning. While still incredibly upsetting, it isn't as bad as earlier reports suggest.

https://www.pressherald.com/2023/10/26/maine-state-police-to-present-public-update-as-search-for-suspected-lewiston-shooter-continues/

Gun control is not necessary. Keep going. First, Second, Third, 100th amendment please.

We need crackkker control
he is just the War returning home.. it always does .. not much to do with gun control .. he would have had found access given his Military biographie..

Having the #1 high school for opiate overdoses in the nation would somewhat argue against the structural integrity of your hypothesis.
Also reducing public safety down to reported murder rates is some really airtight logic
It's probably just the god of statistics and averages biting Maine's ass.

And again, there will be no consequences at all. Not a single mentally unfit person in the US will lose the "right to bear arms".

You know, I saw a specific political ad that I think adds to this point quite well. It was a local one, but my state has been taken over by Trump Republicans (aka straight fascists). I can't find the ad because there have been so many comically evil people in government in the state that I can't just google it because a ton of different scandals come up. This ad was created by the family of this Republican running for office. His family was talking about how they had been trying to get the state to take away his ability to own guns because he was just absolutely batshit and his family thought he was a danger to other people. He had even had violent scandals in office already during this election. Still won though.

Fuck off with your obviously fake shit