From The Dispatch news service November 6:

"Late last month, a man killed 18 people and injured 13 others in Lewiston, Maine. A common refrain in the wake of such tragedies is that “no one saw it coming,” but that’s typically not entirely true. Killers often have mental health issues and have threatened violence in the past, and this case was no different. The killer was an Army reservist, and the military had determined that he should not have access to a weapon or ammunition. An Army colleague had alerted the local police, who contacted the family but did little else…."

"He was denied the purchase of a suppressor from a local gun shop based on his answer to a question on his background check. If anything is clear from the [bloodbath in Maine]—in which everybody from the military to the police …and mental health authorities had good reason to intervene and the legal means to do so—it is that this is not … mainly a question of more robust retail regulation of sporting goods stores. The gun shop clerks in this story did what they were supposed to do: They declined to make a sale to someone they had reason to believe was a prohibited person"

"The police, on the other hand, basically punted public safety to the lunatic’s brother, asking him to lock up the guns and then crossing their fingers and hoping for the best.”