A report from CNN indicates the Maine National Guard asked police to check on Robert Card in mid-September out of concerns that he could “snap and commit a mass shooting.”
Personnel from “the Sagadahoc County and Kennebec County Sheriff’s Offices” responded to the Maine National Guard request by trying to make contact with Card on September 16, 2023.
A sergeant from the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office was alerted, “When [he] answers the door at his trailer, in the past he usually does so with a handgun in hand out of view from the person outside.”
The personnel from the sheriff’s offices were not successful in making contact. CNN notes that a document filed with the welfare check paperwork makes clear that at least one of Card’s fellow guardsman was “concerned that [the reservist] is going to snap and commit a mass shooting.”
Breitbart News noted on October 26, 2023, that police in New York took Card to a West Point hospital for an evaluation in mid-July 2023.
Card had caught the attention of military officials after “acting erratically in mid-July” while taking part in training at West Point, the Associated Press reported. Police in New York were called and Card was taken to West Point’s Keller Army Community Hospital.
The involvement of police in the West Point incident raised questions as to why Maine’s yellow flag law did not come into play.
Breitbart News noted that Maine has a yellow flag law that allows police to petition for temporary confiscation of a person’s firearms. And Maine Public Radio (MPR) explained that the state’s yellow flag law had been used 22 times to take away guns during the time frame of 2020 thru June of 2022. MPR suggested the yellow flag law “could be a model for gun control.”
The news of sheriffs’ offices being alerted that Card could “snap and commit a mass shooting” in mid-September only brings up the question again: How is it that Maine’s yellow flag law was not triggered?
Card is suspected of shooting a total of 18 people to death on October 25, 2023, in Lewiston, Maine. He was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound two days later.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.