Wednesday night's mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine was many things: horrific, terrifying, unfathomable, all the adjectives that get trotted out after these now-routine massacres. What no one can pretend it was, however, was surprising. Maine is especially hostile to even the most reasonable gun laws. The state has been scored an F by the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Sure enough, intial reports on the suspected shooter, 40-year-old Robert Card, show he is a bundle of red flags that, in any functioning legal system, would have prevented him from being armed in the first place. He was recently released from a mental health facility that he had been committed to for two weeks. Maine has no "red flag" law to allow law enforcement to take guns from people in a mental health crisis, nor do they require convicted domestic abusers to relinquish guns. In a little more than one week, arguments in favor of and against expanding such relaxation of gun regulations nationwide begin in the country's highest court.
