I daresay there’s going to be a lot of confusion while this is going on – look at the changing numbers of injured, for example.
Eh, but that’s the thing, that description basically is someone you find casually in any online political argument. And 99.9% of them have no intent to start a massacre.
More information has come out about Card’s Army background. As I suspected he isn’t some hotshot Rambo. He was never trained as an instructor. He was a petroleum supply specialist. As a sergeant first class he was probably a platoon sergeant for a refueling platoon.
“While his unit supported West Point summer training, our records indicate he did not instruct nor have any interactions with cadets in training,” the official said.
An Army spokesperson also confirmed Thursday that there are no records to indicate Card instructed or participated in any of the training.
Card was not trained by the Army as a firearms instructor, “nor did he serve in that capacity for the Army,” the spokesperson, Bryce Dubee, added.“
It seems to me that the claims that Card was a weapons trainer may have their genesis in barroom bullshitting he may have indulged in.
There are lots of firearm safety trainers. For young people for their first hunting lisc. Usually off duty game wardens.
It may have been he was one of them. And over sold his training as a brag.
Yes there are NRA certifications that basically just teach you how to keep people from killing each other accidentally at the range. The basic course is supposed to be 8 hours.
This, from the linked article struck me as curious.
A U.S. Defense Department official confirmed to ABC News that Card was “behaving erratically” while deployed over the summer with his Army Reserve Unit to Camp Smith Training Center in upstate New York to support summer training for West Point cadets.
Leaders of the Army Reserve’s 3rd Battalion, 304th Infantry Regiment informed garrison staff at the training site about his behavior on July 17, the defense official said.
“Out of concern for his safety, the unit requested that law enforcement be contacted,” the official said.
New York State Police officers responded and transported Card to Keller Army Community Hospital at the U.S. Military Academy for medical evaluation, the official said.
I’m pretty ignorant about both military and police procedures, but it seems odd that the Army would require police assistance in transporting an Army member from army duty to an Army hospital.
I’ve had that kind of firearm training. It means I know how to be safe with a gun. It didn’t turn me into The Punisher.
Camp Smith is a New York National Guard facility. It’s state property. The New York State Police have jurisdiction.
No doubt that he was an autodidact when it came to handling firearms; whatever certifications he has may be window dressing but they certainly don’t make him any less dangerous.
I’m watching the new conference this morning and I’m heartened by one thing - I didn’t realize where the boat dock they were talking about was. I thought they were talking about the one further down river. At the place he put in, with a 15 foot boat, he could only float down river for about a mile before he ran into Lisbon Falls, which is not navigable by boat. I had these night mare visions of him floating down the Androscoggin, right to my sister’s back yard.
I could teach someone in 15 minutes how to effectively load and unload a rifle and which hole the bullets come out of. It doesn’t take a lot of training to shoot unarmed people at short range with a rifle. The implication in the beginning was that police were up against a highly trained crazed Army veteran. Basically the plot of Rambo. The reality turns out he is a fuel pumper who never deployed and has no specialized training. He can still shoot people but he is at a severe disadvantage when going up against DEA SRT or FBI HRT. Maybe he is a lifelong hunter and a good shot. He isn’t a tactical genius as was implied in some reports I heard. It didn’t make him less dangerous during the attack, it makes him less dangerous than he could have been now that he’s being hunted by professionals.
I just got an alert/update stating that it’s confirmed that a suicide note was found and they are searching the river. Hopefully they will find a body and this will be over.
Right. No true Scotsman. He’s a gun nut. He knew what he was doing and he knew how to use his weapon. Probably just as well as you could, so what are we arguing about? How easy it is to kill 18 people in five minutes with an AR-15? Fine. Time to get rid of the fucking things.
I’m very sure I explained my point well. I probably overexplained it.
Moderating:
Please remember that this is a breaking news thread. No political jabs. If you’d like to discuss the banning AR-15 rifles, please take it to a different thread. Feel free to link to this one for context.
It was the Lewiston, Maine Police who made the claim that Card was a firearms instructor for the army. They put it in a press release and had put it in their Facebook page, but have since walked back that claim.
They’re called ‘Camps’. I learned this from watching Maine Cabin Masters. Which makes me ask, why isn’t the show called Maine Camp Masters???
Understandably the public wants as much information as possible as quickly as possible. Unfortunately that means some bad initial information gets put out.
Speaking from the point of danger to the public, I’d rather they slightly over-evaluate the risks of a particular active shooter than play down the concerns. Keeping in mind though that indiscriminate claims lead to tragedies such as those that happened around 9/11.
(I don’t intend that, nor believe that is a political jab, just as a caution about the benefits and risks of breaking news as a whole.)
I would think it fair to expect that a military reservist would have better tactical training and firearms proficiency than the average suburbanite however - but yes, almost certainly no specialized training that applied to their atrocious actions. Still a step up from the sort of “protect yourself first, waaaaay before you worry about protecting family and property against a break-in” training that @Loach mentions.
Aside, I’ve had such training twice, first before I ever brought a firearm into my house, and a second time when years ago I applied for a concealed carry permit. Each time I’d say half the class or more was about how to NEVER use the firearm at all, and the consequences if you did, with most of the rest spent on training you how stupidly deadly they were to yourself and those around you.
I took it to mean he’s not on base and had to be rounded up which placed it under local police jurisdiction.