The mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, led that area's congressman to change his mind and call for an assault weapons ban. We are not persuaded that sniveling cowards in Congress who value their careers more than their constituents' lives will follow his lead.
“I never thought I’d grow up and get a bullet in my leg. Like, why do people do this?” — Zoey Levesque, 10, Lewiston, Me.
How do you explain a mass shooting to a child?
Here’s one honest answer, from her representative in Congress, conservative Democrat Jared Golden, in an apology both rare and refreshing. He said he was wrong to oppose a ban on assault weapons and that he now supports one.
“The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure. I ask for forgiveness and support,” Golden said. “For the good of my community, I will work with any colleague to get this done in the time I have left in Congress.”
As the 41-year-old Maine congressman spoke, his community mourned 18 people dead on Oct. 25.
Some were gunned down at a bowling alley; others at a neighborhood bar and grill. The innocent victims included Keith Macneir, 64, a second-generation Fort Lauderdale resident visiting his son and planning to move to Maine to be near him. The son left for a union meeting. During the break, the gunman walked through the door.
All were shot with an assault weapon, one of a kind designed to maim those whom they don’t kill outright. They were invented for the military. To fight wars. Not for civilian use. Not for self-defense. Not to turn schoolhouses, houses of worship, shopping centers and bowling alleys into slaughterhouses.
Nobody hunts squirrels with assault weapons. Certainly not in Maine, where hunting approaches a religion. State regulations prohibit big-game rifles that hold more than five rounds in a magazine, plus one in the chamber. Wildlife in Maine have more of a sporting chance than people, which is also true in Florida.
Maine, sparsely populated and blessed with a low crime rate, has a deeply rural heritage where people haven’t thought they needed strict gun laws and have consistently voted them down. They don’t even have a red-flag law for people with mental illnesses. Their “yellow-flag” version requires a doctor’s opinion before police can seize weapons.
That may be why police across Maine stopped looking for Robert Card until after he murdered 18 people, injured 13, and terrorized the entire state. They’d been warned by the Army Reserve. He had spent two weeks in a mental facility, apparently without a legal commitment.
So much for seeing something and saying something. People did.
No one took them seriously enough. It seems to have been the same tragic lassitude that ended with 17 people dead and 17 injured in Parkland five years ago.
There will always be homicidal and suicidal people wanting to leave their mark on society by hurting it as much as they can, by killing as many others as they can.
Assault weapons make that so very easy. So tragically easy.
Through Oct. 30, the Gun Violence Archive counted 581 mass shootings this year in the only nation where they are commonplace. In the past seven years, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, mass shootings with assault weapons resulted in nearly six times as many people shot, twice as many killed and 23 times more wounded than attacks with other weapons.
Rep. Golden sees the light, but the two senators from Maine do not. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, and Susan Collins, the nearest thing to a moderate Republican, say they favor banning high-capacity magazines, not the weapons themselves.
King specified that he and some colleagues would introduce legislation requiring fixed magazines holding no more than 10 rounds that could not be exchanged when empty. That would be an improvement, but not if it leaves at least 20 million non-conforming weapons in circulation.
Congress is so out of touch that on the very day of the Maine massacre, King and Collins backed a Republican amendment to block the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs from automatically warning the federal background check system of veterans found mentally unable to manage their own benefits.
But they said they would favor a law banning bump stocks, which lend semi-automatic weapons practically the same rate of fire as machine guns. The law would replace a regulation imposed by former President Donald Trump. Trying to out-Trump Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis promised in Iowa to repeal the federal ban entirely. The media noted he has done nothing about a similar law in Florida.
It may be naïve to expect Congress to do anything sensible despite the tragedy that evoked Rep. Golden’s mea culpa in Maine.
A fuller answer to Zoey Levesque’s question may be too raw for a 10-year-old. People perpetrate mass shootings because they can, and because of politicians who won’t stop them. They are selfish, sniveling cowards who care more for their careers and paychecks than for the lives of the public they are sworn to protect.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
