It’s so disturbing. It’s so hard to watch the news, and we are adults; but to have to somehow try and keep children and teens indoors in that area is not easy and fraught with so many emotions no doubt; bc you want them safe but not want them absolutely terrified and traumatized as you shelter in place.
I hate this for everyone.
I wonder if the hearing aids he was using were getting some sort of cross-talk due to some sort of wireless interference/band usage? That could certainly cause a huge problem for someone’s brain to try and interpret correctly.
The email I sent to a local radio host in May, 2022:
“ Hi, Matt. I wanted to mention that I disagree about your assessment that the shooter’s likelihood of being identified as struggling would have been lower in Texas because Maine is so small town and rural. Actually, the Uvalde area is about as rural as you can get. There are only 15,000 people in the immediate town. My dad grew up in Sabinal, 20 miles from Uvalde, and I spent a lot of time there with my grandparents. Even as a young adult, when I visited there I would think this must have been what it was like in the 1950s in most of the country. Friendly, caring people and lots of space.
I think that’s why this is hitting me so hard. Having lived in Texas for 24 years and Maine for even longer now, the two states have a lot in common, especially in the rural areas. If this could happen in Uvalde, Texas, it could happen in Brunswick, Maine (same population).
Anyway, just my two cents.”
The news said he left a suicide note for his son. Didn’t catch any more of the report.
More updates from local media:
https://www.pressherald.com/2023/10/26/our-live-updates-on-the-deadly-lewiston-shootings/
That’s an odd interview with NBC. It pretty much describes normal behavior for a rural community. Happy successful hunters checking in a trophy and shooting on their property. Not exactly out of the ordinary.
Obviously, in recent times, this individual had displayed some clear mental challenges. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how you threaten to kill your military coworkers and that doesn’t garner a more encompassing and ongoing response.
Hopefully his killing spree is over and they capture him soon.
With all due respect, shooting guns “like clockwork” every day on one’s own property is not something I associate with the rural North Carolina area where my parents grew up. Everyone hunted; god knows how many firearms must have existed just out reach of us kids. What I remember is being told early on that they weren’t toys. The kind of behavior described in the NBC interview would have been considered a waste of good ammunition.
With all due respect, there are some individuals that enjoy target shooting, etc. I’ll agree that it can be an expensive hobby if one is shooting regularly but whether it is a waste of ammunition or not is certainly a personal decision.
You’re absolutely right, firearms are not toys. I haven’t seen anyone state that they were.
I live in a farming community where one often hears people target shooting. In fact, a neighbor’s horse was hit by a target- shooter’s “miss” a mile + away. It survived but major veterinary bills were involved.
I live in rural Michigan and hear people target shooting all the time near our house.
We played golf last week and the shooting was especially loud and frenzied.
My hair stylist lives near a Michigan militia camp and has reported that they are out there shooting day and night.
We like to hike, hear target shooting all the time.
At least here where I live, hearing guns is extremely common.
Those living in cities (where I lived before) would have a very different experience.
I had an acquaintance tell me she won’t “live in fear” during incidents like this. I find that phrase kind of insulting. We just had the biggest mass shooting in the US in a year and a half in our backyard, and the guy is at large. I’m sorry, but I’m going to avoid areas where people congregate as much as possible. I guess I’ll go to the grocery store when we’re really low on supplies, but I’m avoiding crowds where I can. I see that as taking precautions, not cowering in fear.
Four people in the deaf community were killed in the shooting. Also, a sign language interpreter who I remember seeing during a lot of the state COVID press conferences. 
In another story, a boy was shot in the arm during the first shooting and taken to the hospital. They called the father, who happened to be at the scene of the second shooting - he rushed to the hospital before that shooting happened. His son’s injury may have saved his life.
I, of course, read about that phenomenon all the time and am at a genuine loss as to when and why shooting round after round of automatic weapons fire in the privacy of one’s backyard, next to the barbecue, became a thing. The real losers, IMO, are the genuine hunters who around this time of year have to go hat in hand to their neighbors for permission to hunt deer because nearly all the older families have posted their land. They just don’t trust who has hold of a gun these days.
I saw this too, and while it’s being reported by NBC News the other source was the UK’s Daily Mail which is not considered by many to be a reputable paper so it gave me pause. Other reports I have read from neighbours disputes this description so I question the reliability of this source and their claim that “people around town knew to ‘stay away’ from the family”.
So he was having a mental break even after he was in care for two weeks. His family reached out and nothing came of it. I guess no laws in place to take guns from someone having a breakdown?
And interesting that for all their concern, the family refuses to discuss whether or not they considered taking away his weapons or talked about it, which means they didn’t.
Two weeks is nothing, at least in my experiences with my son. It took months to stabilize him last year, and he never threatened violence.
According to this article, Maine has a “yellow flag” law that is different from the “red flag” laws that exist in many other states
A proposals for a so-called red flag law that more than 20 states have adopted also failed in 2019 in favor of the yellow flag law that backers said would stop suicides and protect both the public and the constitutional rights of gun owners.
The yellow flag law had the support of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, which was instrumental in writing it and viewed other states’ red flag laws as unconstitutional. Some also saw the suicide rate as a far bigger concern than the sort of mass shootings spreading across other states.
“Maine has a suicide problem that dwarfs homicide as a safety concern for us in the state,” one Sportsman’s Alliance member, John Chapman, told lawmakers.
Under it, law enforcement could detain someone they suspected of posing a threat to themselves or others.
The law, however, differs from red flag laws in that it requires police first to get a medical practitioner to evaluate the person and find them to be a threat before police can petition a judge to order the person’s firearms to be seized.
It had pitfalls.Police sometimes had difficulty finding a doctor to do an evaluation quickly enough and hospitals had concerns about the safety of their personnel who were conducting the evaluations. Last year, the state sought to address that through a telehealth contract to conduct evaluations remotely.
Still, gun control advocates had criticized the law as ham-handed and unlikely to be used by families who don’t want to traumatize a loved one by having them taken into custody. It is also part of an overall weak state approach to gun violence, they say.
It was not clear, however, whether the yellow flag law should have stopped the suspect in the Lewiston killings or where the suspect got the gun he used.
It’s also not clear whether the suspect’s commitment to a mental health facility over the summer triggered a federal requirement against possessing guns.
There was a proposed red flag a couple of years ago that we were pushing for, but it didn’t pass.
Listening to the update. Interesting technology use- there is a QR code with the maps of where they will be and a digital link for tips.