CNN’s Coates: Maine Shooter Picked ‘Soft Targets’ Where He Didn’t Think He’d Get a Response, Didn’t Pick a Gun Range

During an interview with Active Shooter Prevention Project founder Chris Grollnek that took place during CNN’s coverage of the shooting in Lewiston, Maine on Wednesday, host Laura Coates noted that one spot that the shooter targeted was a bowling alley with children in it and that the shooter was “not going to a gun range. This is not going to a place where perhaps he would believe he could encounter people who could respond.” And that he picked “soft targets.”

Coates said, “And I’m looking — of course, in the photo that we’re seeing, he’s at a bowling alley. We’ve heard from eyewitnesses, they saw children running out of this bowling alley. It could have potentially had many children inside. This is not going to a gun range. This is not going to a place where perhaps he would believe he could encounter people who could respond. These are essentially soft targets. What do you make of that?”

Grollnek responded that the shooter either knew the location or had some connection to it and that while he can agree with and understand calls for gun control and improvements around mental health, the overwhelming majority of firearms aren’t used in mass killings and he thinks there are some technological solutions.

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