Wednesday, October 25th, the United States saw its deadliest shooting of 2023, killing 18 people and injuring 13. At approximately 6:56 p.m., shooter Robert Card opened fire at Sparetime Recreation, a bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine, killing seven. Card then travelled to a nearby restaurant where he took the lives of eight more victims. Three more later succumbed to their injuries. Card fled the scene, resulting in a two-day long manhunt.
Maine residents were subject to a shelter in place order during the search for Card, who was found dead on Friday, October 27th. The cause of death was determined to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, with Maine Governor Janet Mills expressing that she was “breathing a sigh of relief that Robert Card is no longer a threat to anyone.”
While citizens of Lewiston are grateful for the end of this traumatic ordeal, real justice frequently alludes perpetrators of gun violence. Card, a trained firearms instructor and Army sergeant, was allowed access to firearms, even after a stay in a psychiatric treatment facility just months prior to the shooting.
Calls for gun-policy reform have long been ignored, but with the massive response in favor of change, new legislation may be afoot. “What’s happened is obviously heartbreaking,” said David Hogg, a gun control activist and survivor of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting: “far too often we see politicians…only come around to actually caring…after members of their own community have been killed.”
