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 locationsā€”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.

ā€œNow, we know the arguments,ā€ Colbert said of the do-nothing response politicians generally have to tragedies such as this. ā€œSome people are going to say this is a mental health issue. Others are going to say itā€™s a gun issue. But thereā€™s no reason it canā€™t be both.ā€

    • Ordoabchao@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      Definitely one way of trying to . One question though, whoā€™s going to pay for all that?

      The mental health services are not going to be free and the gun owners certainly wonā€™t be cool with paying it. The government definitely wonā€™t pay for itā€¦See, this is why I say I have no faith that the problem wonā€™t be solved any time soon, if ever.

      Too many hard and expensive choices to make that will prove massively unpopular with large parts of either side of the argument.

      • bbuez@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        The gun lobby could pay for it! Theyā€™ve got 16 million a year to spare!

        Too expensive! Says residents of the only developed nation where this is a regular occurance