Gun control not the answer – new Speaker

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), the new Speaker of the House, publicly rejected calls for gun control after the latest mass-shooting incident in Lewiston, Maine, earlier this week.

Gun control? No

In an interview with Sean Hannity last night (October 26), the new Speaker discussed many topics likely to challenge him. In reply to a question about gun control, as the Lewiston incident continues to unfold, Johnson rejected that answer.

“The problem,” he told Hannity, “is the human heart. It’s not guns; it’s not the weapons.” Johnson further emphasized that the Constitution recognizes a citizen’s right to protect himself from attack.

Aaron Rupar, author of the Public Notice newsletter, dropped this thread on X with multiple excerpts from the interview.

Sadly, most of the reaction, especially to the anchor post, was negative. But one user cited a study finding that 79 percent of mass murderers have a history of mental illness.

In Lewiston, Maine, police suspect one Robert Card, 40, of killing at least 18 people and wounding 13 more. He started Wednesday night at a bowling alley, then moved to a bar and grill. Largely because Card is still at large, schools, colleges, daycare centers, and businesses are closed by order of the police.

Vice-President Kamala Harris made the most explicit call yet for gun control in such a situation. In fact she called for mass confiscation, which Australia implemented. For the moment, she called for a renewed ban on certain semi-automatic weapons, which the left commonly calls “assault weapons.”

Rep. Johnson rejected that call for gun control, saying “now is not the time” to discuss such legislation.

Not a universal sentiment

The Commonwealth of Australia, nearly ten years ago, ordered owners of semi-automatic rifles and some pump-action rifles to surrender them. The government did compensate them, leading to the term “mandatory buy-back” to describe the enforcement action.

In contrast to the nationwide gun control calls, one Lewiston resident told CNN he wished he had a firearm.

The suspect, Robert Card, has a known mental-health history. It got worse after he started wearing new hearing aids. Card complained of hearing the voices of patrons at the bowling alley and the bar-and-grill criticizing him. His family insisted that the voices were not real, but of course that availed nothing.

He had been a petroleum supply specialist in the U.S. Army Reserve. His base commander sent him for in-patient psychiatric care after he threatened the base with an unspecified attack.

The hearing of imaginary voices is a common symptom of paranoid schizophrenia. Furthermore, suspicion of receiving unfair criticism from others is one of the classic varieties of paranoid ideation. Still, the presence of the new hearing aids raises the question of how sensitive they were – and whether the criticisms were real or not. No media accounts have commented on the sensitivity of the new hearing aids.