Originally Posted by
sonatine
his sister made it sound like he had some sort of 'incident' that left him reaaaal fucked up and 'estranged' from family a while back.
also fun fact the military cant find any record of him being enlisted but somehow hed been pushing the narrative that he served.
not someone who should have ever had a gun, clearly.
Yeah it's clear that this dude was a crazy fanatic, and at age 48, one can't blame it on youthful exuberance.
From the NYT article, it more seemed like the family kept their distance from him because of his political extremism. I'm guessing he was ranting about wanting to violently overthrow the government and/or kill conservatives, and when they tried to reason with him, he just got crazier. He probably scared/disturbed them enough to where they just told him to stay away.
The worst part of this was he was arrested both in June for the reckless driving / child endangerment thing AND early July for illegal weapons possession in public / resisting arrest.
He shouldn't have been on the streets. A guy walking around with guns who fights with the police is a ticking time bomb. Indeed, that bomb exploded, and the Portland DA who decided not to charge him has blood on their hands.
This is a problem when you have far-left DAs -- they will often feel too much and think too little. A position like district attorney should be about enforcing laws and being pragmatic. You should not bring emotion to the job, nor should you elect to let a lawbreaker walk because you agree with his politics or cause. If you do, then you're doing a huge disservice to the law-abiding citizens of your community, who trust you to put away the dangerous people who do bad things.
Like I keep saying, the left is really, really, really bad at crime and punishment.