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.”
Gun ownership is a touchy issue to the US population in general. shrugs
Ease of access to firearms is a massive part of the problem, but saying that I will be downvoted even more. Add in the fact there are people having mental issues and breakdowns more than ever, and you can see why mass shootings are increasing.
Simply put, it’s not an issue that is going to be solved any time soon, if ever. It is a highly politicized issue, which you can tell by the ferocity of the responses I got to my flippant original comment.