Dear Mainer,
On Wednesday night, 18 Mainers were murdered and 13 others were wounded. Those who escaped unharmed are no doubt suffering from wounds that are not visible. And for the families of the victims – I recognize that there are no words and that try as we may, it is impossible to fully know or share their pain.
I am not unfamiliar with violent death, nor am I unfamiliar with violence against innocent people. But I left much of my feelings about that behind in another part of the world and I buried those memories pretty deep. This tragic shooting has unburied those memories and carried a harsh reality about life, and about this world we live in, into the community that I call home and laid bare many reassuring lies that I have told myself for quite some time now. I recognize this dangerous world all too well, but I had convinced myself that we are protected against it here in Maine. Clearly we are not.
As you likely know, I have previously opposed calls to ban AR-15s or similar rifles. I am now joining the call to ban their sale and restrict the possession of them. Some people have accused me of trying to capitalize on this tragedy to push a liberal agenda – I am almost jealous of their ignorance – I hope they don’t have to learn the hard way how wrong they are as I have learned about myself this past week.
It is not easy to admit being wrong. But I was. This represents a big policy shift for me and so I believe I owe you a full account of how this unfolded.
I will begin with January 6, 2021. Remember that day? It was worse than you imagine and I think the country is fortunate that it wasn’t even worse. I left our nation’s capital thinking, for the first time, that large-scale partisan violence might actually be possible in America. Having fought in two wars involving partisans who warred against each other in their own communities, I can say confidently that you don’t want this in your community, it would be worse than you think.
Like many elected officials, I received death threats after January 6. I went home and bought a handgun and later an A1 Government model rifle in 5.56 mm. I bought it because I am intimately familiar with it. With some modifications, it’s pretty much the same one I carried everywhere, and even slept next to, in Afghanistan and Iraq. I bought it to protect my wife, our home, and Rosemary, who was born in May 2021.
I remain a strong believer in not only the right to self-defense but also, unfortunately, the necessity of it. This is what I believe to be at the heart of the Second Amendment. But anyone familiar with my legislative record would understand that I believe our Constitution and our courts seek to find a balance between the individual right and the public's right for security and the obligation of the government to provide it.
If you’d asked me Wednesday morning, I would have insisted on the righteousness of my previous position about rifles like the AR-15. By Thursday evening, that had changed.
Wednesday evening, when I received word of a shooting at the bowling alley and the shelter in place order because it was an active shooter situation, the first thing that went through my mind is that the bowling alley is only a half mile from my home and that he might be in my neighborhood. I was unable to reach my wife until about 9 PM, almost two hours later.
I spent all of Wednesday night and Thursday morning on the phone. I got on a flight to Boston with a plan to drive to Lewiston, check in on my wife and kid, and go to City Hall for a briefing on what was happening. During my drive, I learned that there would be a press conference and so I started thinking about what I would say to people who are more than my constituents, they are my neighbors. I wrote the remarks given at that press conference in the last 30 minutes of a two and a half hour drive. I knew that the question about the rifle used was going to come up and so I spent much of that drive thinking about it.
I looked at the photos of that man walking into the bowling alley. He held the rifle like, and had the walking stance of, a well-trained professional. I realized he was near the worse case scenario: armed with a rifle he was trained to use and gone crazy.
I have often sat in restaurants or paced through the grocery store with my family, carrying a firearm for protection, and thought methodically through my reaction if a shooter walked in the door. My wife has asked me mid-thought what I was thinking about and I’ve replied “nothing,” or “don’t worry about it.” Sometimes I would tell myself to stop being paranoid – I don’t feel the slightest bit paranoid anymore.
When I played those scenarios out in my mind they always ended well. But looking at those images last Thursday I realized how unreasonable that expectation is. Can a good guy with a gun stop a bad guy with a gun? Yes they can. But is it guaranteed to go that way? Absolutely not. Actually, it won’t without some serious good luck – right time, right place, right angle. Everything has to go right.
The first question I asked myself on Thursday was would it make a difference to me, if I’d been there armed with my sidearm when that man walked in the door, whether or not he had an AR-15, some other rifle, or a shotgun? The answer is yes, in a life or death game of milliseconds and distance, it does make a difference.
I know the counter argument. He could do it with other rifles. That’s true. But this style of rifle is near perfect for the rapid reacquisition of targets. The recoil more or less puts your muzzle right back on target if you know the proper technique. Coupled with a 30 round magazine of 5.56 or .223 that with muscle memory you can speed reload in seconds. That pop pop pop doesn’t make the eye blur or hardly distract your focus in the slightest. It’s near perfect and that’s why these killers keep using it to carry out these mass shootings.
The next question I asked myself is, what do I do now that I’m ready to admit this can happen in any neighborhood? Are guys like me going to have to start carrying AR-15s strapped over our shoulders like we strap handguns on our waists when we take the family out to eat, to buy groceries, go to the movies, drive them to school? If we have to for the protection of our loved ones a lot of us surely would. But is that the society we want for our families or for our kids' future? For me, the answer to this question is an easy no. And by the way, like many of us just experienced, you can’t always be there.
Do we want an increased police presence everywhere or a surveillance state that follows our every move? I don’t think so. And like many of you, I remain skeptical of the government's ability to efficiently run complex programs and to do it equitably. I don’t think making it harder for the average American to buy guns is the right answer. I think it should remain fairly easy. Do we have great faith in the government to use laws, like red flag programs, in a timely manner, and always fairly? I think we all know it’s unreasonable to expect perfection – things fall through the cracks and authority sometimes overreaches.
I’ve come to believe that the easiest step we can take is the simplest solution: we should remove these deadliest of rifles from the equation. We should ban the further sale of them and, at a minimum, we should regulate the ongoing possession of them with a permit and a regular review process in order to keep them.
Last Wednesday night, I prayed for the safety of my wife and my daughter and I prayed for the lives of everyone caught in the sights of the shooter. I remember my friend and colleague praying that God would be their shield and blade. Later, I picked up a daily bible study, turned to October 25 and read. I said the Lord’s Prayer repeatedly. I asked for strength and grit. I prayed for wisdom and grace.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about something the Marine Corps calls the Ladder of Accountability. The bottom four rungs of the ladder are behaviors that cause things to happen to you. They are: blame others, personal excuses, “I can’t”, and wait and hope. The top four rungs are for accountable behaviors such that things happen because of you – they lead to the “bell of success.” They are: acknowledge reality, “embrace it,” find solutions, and make it happen.
The answer about what to do washed over me as I wrote my remarks on the way to Lewiston. I didn’t have the slightest clue what the answer was when I started typing, but it became clear to me that I'd been hanging on to the bottom four rungs of that ladder and terrible things happened to people in my community. Thursday night, I started climbing the Ladder of Accountability by accepting reality and embracing it. I’ve proposed a solution but I haven’t yet reached the top.