A couple weeks ago in Lewiston, Maine, a guy named Robert Card went into a downward spiral after his girlfriend rejected him. He was making threats to shoot up an army base and was put into a mental hospital for a few weeks. When he was let go, there was no follow up treatment. He was becoming delusional, thinking that people were spreading rumors about him that he was a pedophile. Shortly after, he went to a bowling alley and shot and killed seven people, including a 14-year-old boy and his father. Then he went four miles down the street to a restaurant and killed eleven more people. After that, he drove to the back of a recycling center in a trailer park where he used to work and committed suicide. This raises a lot of questions. What kind of mental health treatment did he get? Why was he allowed to have guns after he spent two weeks in a mental hospital? What kind of help was made available to him? Aside from being in a mental hospital, I don’t think he received any treatment. He went downhill until he took his AR-15 assault weapon and shot up that bowling alley and restaurant, resulting in eighteen dead, thirteen wounded, and his own suicide. The town of Lewiston is in complete shock and the whole town is in unimaginable grief. I agree that assault weapons should be banned and that we need better mental health treatment, but those things aren’t going to stop violence by themselves. We need to focus on the people who are committing these kinds of crimes. We need to devise treatment plans and strategies to help them. This guy gave plenty of warning signals like openly threatening to shoot up an army base. You can’t ask for more of a red flag than that. There needs to be treatment plans for these people. We need to have spiritual programs teaching them that hate is wrong. I think this man could’ve been helped had he gotten the proper treatment. We need something like self-determination where a team of people can sit down with them, work with them, and try to steer them away from violence. We need to put the emphasis on the people committing these crimes because that’s where the problem lies - inside their minds.
We can’t go on living like this. What is our freedom worth if this sort of thing is allowed to keep happening? Where you go to a bowling alley to have fun with your kids and you end up dead. What kind of society is that? We need to develop treatment programs for potential mass shooters. We need to find out what they’re good at and we need to teach them the skills they need to have a relationship. Robert Card’s girlfriend breaking up with him sent him in a downward spiral. I don’t know what caused them to break up, but he probably didn’t have any relationship skills and his girlfriend finally decided that he was not a good man to be with. I can’t help but wonder how she feels now knowing her ex-boyfriend killed all those people. Yes, we need gun control, to ban assault weapons, and better mental health treatment, but we have to focus on the people who are committing these crimes because if we don’t, society will crumble. If this keeps up, what kind of future are we going to have?
I would like to be among the group of people who are trying to solve this. I want to be a consultant to violent people; I think I could help them.