Fox Contributor Demands to Know ‘Who Dropped the Ball’ on Maine Shooting Suspect Who Was Treated at Mental Health Facility
Fox News contributor Tom Homan outlined the outstanding danger while authorities search for the gunman who killed at least 16 people and injured dozens more in a sequence of shootings in Maine.
The former acting ICE director joined Fox & Friends on Thursday morning to discuss last night’s attacks on a restaurant and a bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine. Authorities identified Robert Card as a person of interest in the shooting, and reports on their news bulletin say he’s an army firearms instructor who was committed to a mental health facility this summer for reported issues of “hearing voices and threats to shoot up” the National Guard Base in Saco, ME.
Homan assessed, “it’s going to be tough to find this guy” because pictures of the suspect indicate his training with weapons.
“As soon as we saw the first picture, I said this guy is trained and knows what he is doing, which makes him more dangerous,” he said. “Here’s the problem: he is military-trained, right? They are trained how to evade capture from the enemy. His enemy right now is police officers, so he is going to be difficult to find, and he’s extremely dangerous because he is well-trained, and that weapon can do a lot of damage very quickly.”
As Homan spoke about the search efforts, he pivoted to the argument, “This not a gun issue. It’s a mental health issue.”
This guy isn’t stupid. He knows what he is doing, so it not like — I’ve heard people say ‘Well, it’s not a gun issue. It’s a stupid issue.’ No, this is a mental health issue. This country has mental health problems. We know that. There is no plan to deal with it.
The Code of Federal Regulations talks about when a medical professional can communicate with law enforcement the guy may be a danger. The problem is every state has their own laws. Some states have red flag laws. Some have a yellow flag law. Maine, I think, is a yellow flag law. So every state handles it differently. There’s no clear, precise, nationwide plan for how to deal with a mental case that has access to weapons and maybe be seen dangerous to the public.
Because Ainsley Eahardt brought up Card’s time in a mental health facility, Homan expanded on that by saying, “We need to find out who dropped the ball.”
“How did the ball get dropped from being in a mental institution to threatening to shoot up a military installation?” He asked. “This failed in Maine; it’s gonna fail over and over again until we address the mental health issue and how they deal with law enforcement. We have got to fix this.”
Watch above via Fox News.
