The visit of the President of the United States to the site of a gun massacre has already become a custom that serves to complete the sequence of events that from time to time follows the tragedy that is so genuinely American. The October 25 mass murder in Lewiston, Maine, was no exception. Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden traveled Friday afternoon to pay tribute to the victims, speak to politicians and local authorities, honor the agents, doctors or ambulance drivers involved and comfort the families. To them all, the president said, “Jill and I are here representing the American people to make sure you know you are not alone.”
But unlike recent events – such as the massacres in Buffalo (May 2022, 10 dead), Uvalde (May 2022, 21 dead) or Monterey Park in California (January of this year, 10 dead) – Biden did not take advantage of the opportunity , to give a speech and call for progress on legislation to tighten gun control or ban assault rifles like those used in Lewiston by Robert Gunman, a 40-year-old reserve soldier and perpetrator of the recent mass shooting. deadly so far this year and throughout the history of the state of Maine. Maybe it’s frustration. Or the product of simple boredom: “Jill and I have done this too many times,” Biden said on Friday.
The presidential couple observed a moment of silence and placed a bouquet of white flowers on a small altar in front of the Schemengees Bar and Grille, the second scene of the massacre in which eight people died. Card had begun his macabre mission shortly before seven o’clock in the afternoon about six kilometers away at the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley, killing seven people in the process. Three others died in hospital that same night.
He then drove to the neighboring city of Lisbon, where he left his SUV and disappeared. Authorities imposed a lockdown in Lewiston, Lisbon, Auburn and Bowdoin, where his family home was located. The captivity lasted 48 hours, during which hundreds of local, regional, state and federal officials from across the country searched for the man in the woods, area homes and even the waters of the Androscoggin River. Eventually, his lifeless body, with signs of suicide, turned up in a trailer parked in the parking lot of a recycling company where he had worked until April.
Mental health
Since the discovery took place and this rural community of about 40,000 people breathed a sigh of relief, it has been known that Card’s family has warned about the deterioration of his mental health and that authorities failed to properly manage alarms like this one that should have gone off. When he spent two weeks in a psychiatric hospital, he told a friend that he was planning mass murder or that he had attacked a comrade.
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Biden has shown during his presidency that he enjoys providing comfort, whether in dealing with victims of a tornado, a hurricane or a massacre like the one in Maine. He has also repeatedly reiterated his stance on guns. He created the first White House Office to Prevent Gun Violence and pressured lawmakers on Capitol Hill to push through a rule banning the sale of rifles like the AR-15, developed as a weapon of war in the 1950s and could fire hundreds of bullets with great precision in a short period of time.
“Today we cry in Maine because this tragedy is leaving a painful wound across the country,” the US president said on Friday. “It’s pure common sense. We need sensible, responsible actions that protect our children, our families and our communities. Regardless of our political leanings, this is about protecting our freedom to go to a bowling alley, restaurant, school or church without fear of murder.”
According to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive, which tracks mass shootings in the United States (for an incident to be considered such, it must have resulted in four fatalities, including deaths and injuries excluding the attacker), there were 589 recorded. so far this year. 22 since Maine alone. The latest accident occurred in the early hours of this Saturday in Cincinnati, Ohio, resulting in one death and five injuries. According to the AP agency, 37 of these indifferent people ended in a massacre.
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