>'Flood the country with guns, just not near me' - Republicanshttps://www.huffpost.com/entry/austin-theriault-police-call-assault-rifle_n_66da4adee4b0abbb7b4442b1Maine state Rep. Austin Theriault, a Republican running for a critical U.S. House seat as a champion of the Second Amendment, called his local sheriff’s office after passing a man wielding what looked like an AR-15 rifle while going into his home.
In a bid to unseat Democratic Rep. Jared Golden that could decide control of the House, Theriault has attacked Golden for endorsing an assault weapons ban after a man with an assault-style rifle murdered 18 people in Lewiston, Maine, in late October last year.
But Theriault, a former champion race car driver who lives in Fort Kent, Maine, has apparently not always been comfortable in the presence of the AR-15, perhaps the best known example of an assault-style rifle.
HuffPost obtained the records of Theriault’s interactions with the Aroostook County, Maine sheriff’s department. Theriault called the Aroostook County, Maine sheriff’s department in the evening of Jan. 10, 2023, to report his concerns about a man wielding what Theriault thought was an AR-15 while the man was entering his front porch.
According to the report, the dispatcher at the sheriff’s department said Theriault “wanted to report a man walking onto his porch holding his AR-15. He didn’t have an address but stated he wanted law enforcement notified in case the man fired shots.”
No shots were fired, the report noted.
In their own write-up of the incident, the officer subsequently tasked with responding to Theriault’s call implied that Theriault might have a tendency to unnecessarily report other people’s behavior to the police.
“Austin Theriault called in advising a male subject he passed was standing on his porch with what appeared to be [an] AR-15 rifle. I reviewed other cards and saw that Austin has called in multiple suspicious complaints to police,” the officer wrote.
