joker-amerikkklap

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.

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      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 ™ 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.

      • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          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.

      • FALGSConaut [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        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 (US foreign policy ), and I don’t see a realistic way to implement buybacks/confiscations/licensing program without frothingfash exacerbating the whole situation and leading to even more mass shootings

  • LaGG_3 [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    There were no initial signs of terrorism.

    The not-terrorism/terrorism scale really is US foreign policy. 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.

  • loathsome dongeaterA
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • AFineWayToDie [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • iie [they/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • AbbysMuscles [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • Binette [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • Shinji_Ikari [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • ChaosMaterialist [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      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 anti-cracker-aktion chudeology zizek-fuck gets off the hook every time!

    • YourFavoriteFed [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    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?

    • Adkml [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      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?

    • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      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.”

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • D3FNC [any]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        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

    • dannoffs@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • WIIHAPPYFEW [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        They reported to superiors that they were hearing voices and were discharged without any restriction on owning high caliber firearms

        galaxy-brain GEE, IF ONLY SOMETHING COULD’VE BEEN DONE ABOUT SUCH AN UNPREVENTABLE TRAGEDY joker-amerikkklap

      • D3FNC [any]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Only in the army would nobody question the assumption that hearing voices automatically translates into always doing everything the voices tell you to do

    • Adkml [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • stigsbandit34z [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        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

        • Adkml [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          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

  • Blue and Orange@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    This is just going to keep happening over and over and over again. It’s always a tragedy but never a surprise.