Everybody Knows

The military, law enforcement, family members, and mental health professionals all knew the Maine killer was dangerous.

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Security forces take measures at the site where at least 18 people were killed and 13 injured in a mass shooting in Maine on October 26, 2023. (Photo by Fatih Aktas/Anadolu/Getty Images)

A horrible massacre in Maine—who could have seen it coming?

Everybody. 

The Army did. The Maine killer was a reservist whose behavior exhibited mental illness of a dangerous kind: He had assaulted friends and colleagues, gave voice to delusions of persecution, and had been remanded to a psychiatric hospital. The Army handed down its judgment, that he “should not have a weapon, handle ammunition, and not participate in live fire activity.” And then the Army washed its hands of the matter, save for being sure to point out that the killer did not have access to military-issued weapons at the time of his crime.  

The police saw it coming. They had been informed by one of the killer’s military colleagues that he seemed ready to “snap and commit a mass shooting.” Note the specificity of the threat identified—not some vague notion that the reservist was a danger to himself and others, but that he was going to do exactly what he ended up doing. Police visited his home and spoke with his family. Do you know what the police did? They got his brother to promise to try to secure any firearms that the mass shooter might use to pull off the mass shooting everybody expected him to commit. This raises some obvious questions, such as: Why do we have police? No doubt the killer’s brother meant well, but he is not a sworn law-enforcement officer with a badge and a gun and the ability to go to a judge to get a warrant. 

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  1. Typodoc2

    Repeal 2A. After that, replace it with a new amendment or leave it to the states. As long as 2A is in place—and inevitably politicized—this problem will remain insoluble.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/john-paul-stevens-repeal-second-amendment.html

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  2. Betsybowditch

    It is important to keep in mind none of these restrictions are settled law. I can remember how difficult it was back in 2015 to get California's Red Flag law through the state legislature despite the fact both the father of a college campus mass shooter and the father of one of his random victims worked together to get it done.

    Extract: The laws “are being challenged, and the second they are signed, the clock starts ticking toward a judgment striking them down,” the state gun association told The Associated Press.

    Marisa McKeown, a prosecutor and supervisor of the Crime Strategies Unit in the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, said the basis of that [Bruen] landmark court ruling — the idea that any gun restriction has to be traced to the “historical tradition of firearm regulation” in the United States — has spurred numerous local legal challenges to current gun enforcement. Gun violence restraining orders, for example, allow authorities to temporarily disarm people who have made credible and serious threats against others or themselves. Such a restraining order must be reviewed by a judge within 21 days.

    “It is absolutely not settled,” McKeown said of the future of red-flag laws in California. “We are far from in the clear to have these long term. All of these decisions heard across the country challenge the fabric of any regulatory action.”

    https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/11/06/south-bay-authorities-are-a-state-leader-in-disarming-troubled-people-but-the-laws-backing-them-are-facing-serious-challenges/

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  3. Roger.Chylla

    Let's be clear about the the scope of the problem we are trying to solve. How do we stop any number of unstable people, most of whom are not criminals and have never been incarcerated, from gaining access to ubiquitious firearms to commit crimes at random times and random places against random victims and who have no fear of being arrested or even dying (or even DESIRE that outcome). THAT is the sobering problem to address here. We have to confront the problem directly and realize that we actually have to *directly* prevent that outcome. The only paths I see are 2 things that make all of us uncomfortable:
    i) We need to have ubiquitous cameras and surveillance technology with the ability to recognize people brandishing firearms and use this technology to disable the attacker and help the potential victims escape. We need "zero response" technology (as opposed to "first responders")
    ii) We need to have technology that makes it so that only a gun owner can fire his/her own weapon. This is the only way we can prevent an unstable person from being able to use a firearm.

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  4. Roger.Chylla

    Our politics fails to be problem solving. The diagnosis I see from many threads like this one is that a certain fraction of mass murders could be presented from the ENFORCEMENT of certain types of "red flag" laws. Those who oppose such laws will point to the enforcement as a basis for their opposition. Those of us who think such laws are good policy must be focused on ENFORCEMENT where such laws already exist. I don't pretend to know specifically HOW to enforce but I have great confidence this is the right question.

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    1. Betsybowditch

      I agree. Read this in the LA Times:

      The Maine shooter was “a poster child” for use of the red flag law, says Wintemute, director of the UC Firearms Violence Research Program.

      “We pioneered it in California. It’s specifically intended for crises like this. It’s much less likely this [mass shooting] would have happened in California.”

      It was pushed by the father of a mass shooter who had implored law enforcement to confiscate his son’s guns, as his social media posts became more threatening, only to be told, back in 2014, there was nothing they could do.

      But family members may be hesitant to introduce unknown legal consequences on their child. The father of the Highland Park shooter pleaded guilty today to seven counts of reckless conduct. He had sponsored his son’s FOID application in 2019 when his son was 19 and too young to apply for his own gun license. This was despite previous threats by his son to harm himself and loved ones.

      Or worse, the mother of Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook shooter, thought firing guns was a bonding opportunity for them. She was his first victim. I see her choices as more tragic than criminal.

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  5. Avatar photo
    Scarlette Tarte

    All of that reticence by cops and everyone else is because too many people hold the 2nd amendment as near sacred.

    Cops in Texas once told my husband who was concerned about an employee that "well, we all own guns and we don't like to just go and confiscate them because we wouldn't want that done to us...our guns protect our homes and families".

    Yeah, until they are used for one of the other things guns are used for...killing innocent people.

    Then there are the crazy "constitutional sheriffs" who "won't enforce an unconstitutional law" of which they believe red flag laws are.

    Lots of law enforcement believes that, in fact.

    2nd amendment enthusiasts need to get behind the idea of actually taking these kind of people's guns away. Sure, go ahead with the hearings to determine if that is truly necessary, but people are dying because gun enthusiasts are too worried that THEIR guns will be taken, to take them from the severely mentally ill.

    This guy was ill and he knew it. He is a victim of this as well. No one interveined to save his life. That's pathetic. He was saying "I am hearing voices, voices saying horrible things to me" and no one either loves him or their community enough to take care of him.

    The brother? All he thought was "CYA". The military? The same. The cops, though, they are paid to care by the citizens of that town , or Uvalde, or Sandy Hook, or Colorado or any number of places.

    First of all, these laws are not written so that just anyone with a vendetta can get the state can come in and take your arms...there has to have been some pattern of violence, or mental illness, or threats made by you yourself for anyone to have a chance at getting your firearms taken away just temporarily, until further hearings can be held on whether the person is truly dangerous or not.

    YES, we want the laws enforced. So that means law enforcement needs to get behind the idea of enforcing laws they don't personally like. That means we need to get the romanticized notion out of our head about the frontier American and his gun. We need to stop with silly lines like "from my cold, dead hands!"

    Lastly, we need to accept the idea that firearms are extraordinarily dangerous tools in the hands of madmen. If we truly believe it's "not the gun, but the person", then stop romanticizing gun ownership.

    OR, we can continue letting these God awful events happen until young people, sick to death of all this mayhem along with their mothers say "enough" and pass a constitutional amendment nullifying the second.

    Keep not enforcing the laws because "oh, I wouldn't want that done to me!", and the populace will enforce their own version on everyone, which many Americans would hate.

    I suggest everyone call their local law enforcement and your town's city council and tell them..."next time a shooting like this happens and you knew about the person's problem and DIDN'T take their guns, I will bring a lawsuit from as many people in this community as I can against this department, against this Sheriff, against this town. We will bankrupt all these entities. We will bring civil litigation against the council and mayor, personally, who did not instruct law enforcement to confiscate."

    The attitude toward guns among law enforcement needs to change. The attitude toward guns in America needs to change. It is nothing but a tool. It is not a "cherished part of our heritage". Having that romanticized vision of gun ownership is hurting other Americans, when it is taken so far that law enforcement doesn't want to do their jobs around it.

    It's a tool. That's it. Take it out of hands that want to do harm with it, same as you would take away an axe, a bomb, what have you.

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    1. Joe

      If the 2nd amendment was treated as sacrosanct then why is Kevin Williamson describing a process to obtain a legal firearm that would extend into 2025? In my own state everything, even pellet guns, are treated as super duper dangerous weapons. With all the open bigotry against Jews and the now longtime anti-cop fanaticism, I'm feeling compelled to get a gun for personal protection. This is a very lengthy process (as it shouldn't be). It might take me over a year.

      The problem that Williamson is describing is partly that we as a society occasionally refuse to take guns away from crazy people who already have them, but the bigger problem is that we allow these crazy people to live in our society. It's complicated and neither side wants to accept blame. I personally fall mostly on the "blame LBJ" side of this, as he is the father of Medicare. Follow the money! JFK and Reagan also get their share of blame, but it shall be noted that the two largest institutions in my state (CT) closed in the mid 90s, when Clinton was President. One of these institutions was in Adam Lanza's town! Out of the three institutions we did have we kept the smallest one open. What could anyone have expected from all of this? Just recently a patient of my brother, a psych nurse, was released from jail and killed a visiting nurse, a simple LPN, at his halfway house. My brother won't say too much about him (he may need to keep it zipped until a trial, of course), but he did tell me that this person is a classic psychopath. For any real details about the guy I have to rely on news reports describing why he was put in jail in the first place. Of course they had to release this guy and put him in an unsupervised facility. Sure he was a psycho who raped and slit the throat of a prostitute, but critical race theory and the demand for prison abolition mean our governor must push through the dialectic between "sane" and "insane" policy with half baked plans to reduce the overall number of inmates and close some of the prisons (including the one this psycho was held at). If a few elderly LPNs get brutally murdered after the fact there are certainly PR issues to address, some beaurocrats will have to suffer consequences and the government may wind up settling a lawsuit with the LPNs family, but in the grand scheme of things a few dead LPNs are the price that must be paid to address the concerns of these insane revolutionaries who are taking over the Democrat party.

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      1. Roger.Chylla

        One way to avoid solving a problem is to make it so complicated and "upstream" that it becomes impossible to solve it. Your position that we have to reduce the number of violently unstable people to keep them from having weapons is akin to the position that we must solve poverty in Latin America to keep poor people from illegally crossing our border. No, that is just too darn hard. We really have to solve the problem of ENFORCING red flag laws and not try think we can stop a country of 350 million people from having crazy individuals. Just do the math. If even 1 in 10,000 people are a danger, that means that about 35,000 people are dangerous. This is our starting situation and we cannot change it. How do we stop tens to hundreds of thousands of potentially murderous people from actually murdering people. Don't try to weasle out of facing that problem.

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        1. Joe

          Guns are necessary for the country to remain free, the fewer gun regulations the better. Insane people used to be taken care of. That and a general decline in religious and family values are the too causes of this.

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          1. Roger.Chylla

            Your comment does inspire another "solution" to the problem which involves the mandatory incarceration of people who exhibit the behaviors described in this piece. That is one approach but I don't think the 2nd amendment overrides all of the others.

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  6. Burt

    I understand the risks of overzealous enforcement of red/yellow flag laws, but in this particular case it seems the warnings were multiple and from varied sources so the chance of over enforcement in this case was probably as low as it gets. Sounds like ultimately, it's a failure of the police to do their job.

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    Probably Wrong

    Pay the cops and teachers better, and take away their preposterous “unions”

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  8. Eazy-E

    I think Kevin should follow the first rule of Public Choice Theory: you cannot choose better people. You could replace all of the police officers in the department, and the new police force would act like the old one as long as the rules and incentives are the same. Don't blame the people; blame the rules they operate under.

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    1. Roger.Chylla

      I see him pointing to enforcement as the problem. I don't think most people think that "replacing all the cops" is the best way to address problems of enforcement. You are arguing against points he is not making.

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      1. Eazy-E

        Maybe I miscommunicated something. I did not insinuate that KDW is proposing that we replace the entire police force. I am simply arguing that this probably isn't a problem with the individual cops. It's a systemic failure that requires a change to the rules and incentives which everyone operates under.

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    2. BigMcLargeHuge

      And then no one's ever responsible for anything, yay!

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      1. Eazy-E

        We should blame individual people for their individual failings, but we should also realize that systemic problems can't be fixed by simply replacing the actors in the situation.

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    Reepicheep (Judd)

    I would say if the Continental US were attacked and you showed up to muster with one, and they put you in jail, I don't think that would be a country worth defending.

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  10. Kinneyde32

    I do acknowledge that in the 18th century, the US government did authorize privately owned ships to be privateers, and they apparently did have cannons on board.

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