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.”
I think the issue that a ban will take years to effectively cool the possession of assault weapons is not actually an issue worth stalling over. While a lot of people tend to look at a law as “if it’s not immediately 100% effective it is garbage” in reality if you call for a refund based recall it will take a chunk out of the total guns out there. Patience is nessisarily.
Seizures of weapons in illegal transport or market will eventually account for another chunk. Guns are regularly stolen from home break ins so a lot of personal arsonal will find it’s way into black markets. Over time when the things can be reported when used in gun clubs or spotted in the wild you take away a lot of the “fun” quotent of owning the weapons making surrender much more likely. The legal ramifications of finding the weapons in self defense cases motivates from another end. If you can’t use them for self defense then the argument of what the point of having them gets stronger. A lot of people own these weapons in part for the same reasons they do expensive cars - the joy of using them and the cashe of bragging and showing them off. While 2nd amendment stans might hoarde them for ideological reasons they probably are gunna be forced to make them hard to find and make sure they don’t mention them to young children who might narc on them making kids getting their hands on them less likely.
The more effectively useless and detrimental you legally make something over time you do wear away at the trouble and anxiety required to maintain ownership. What the US should aim for is long game de-escalation. If people don’t start the process it just means the payoff is gunna be that further down the road.