Archive for the 'Guns' Category

Melanie Hain

From the Patriot-News:

Meleanie Hain, the pistol-carrying Lebanon mom who received national attention for taking a loaded gun to her daughter’s soccer game, was shot to death Wednesday night with her husband in an apparent murder-suicide, police said. The couple’s three children were home at the time and were not injured.

Meleanie Hain was thrust into the national spotlight when she took a gun, in plain view and holstered on her hip, to a soccer game Sept. 11, 2008, at Optimist Park in Lebanon. Her permit to carry a gun was revoked by Lebanon County Sheriff Michael DeLeo on Sept. 20, 2008. DeLeo said Hain showed poor judgment in wearing her gun to the game.

Hain’s permit was reinstated by Lebanon County Judge Robert Eby on Oct. 14, 2008, but the judge asked her to conceal it at soccer games. Hain said she would continue to carry it openly under the Second Amendment.

Hain then filed a lawsuit against DeLeo for $1 million in U.S. Middle District Court seeking reimbursement of attorneys’ fees and costs, emotional distress and lost wages.

Good thing the Hains were allowed to carry guns for personal protection, huh?

Breaking news from yesterday that Faux seems to have missed.  A little something to hook nearly anyone’s sense of the macabre.   It seems like a couple of guys on the inside think there is not much that Prince is not capable of.
The Nation

ABC News

Some of us don’t take much convincing, already pretty convinced that this stuff was going on, but everybody else needs to take a much harder look at this crook and his organization, pretty much fits the definition of violent psychopath.

…and people wonder why there’s so much gun crime in the US

From WYFF:

A driver, now identified as an Asheville firefighter, shot a bicycle rider because he was angry the man was riding with his child on a busy road, Asheville police said. Officers said the victim was riding with his wife and had his 3-year-old son in a child seat attached to his bicycle when a driver approached him.

Police said the driver, Charles Diez, claimed he was upset that the victim was bike riding with his child on the heavily traveled Tunnel Road. Diez pulled a gun and opened fire, hitting the victim in his bicycle helmet, according to police. They said the bullet penetrated the outer lining of the helmet but did not actually hit the victim’s head.

Police arrested Diez and charged him with attempted first degree murder.

Isn’t it nice that we have laws which allow anyone, no matter how irrational, to own a gun? See how they make life safer for law-abiding citizens?

From the Smoking Gun:

Steven Gilmore, a wannabe rapper, tried to rob a Florida convenience store Friday night and shot an employee in the head with a BB gun in a bid to establish “street cred” for his nascent hip-hop career. Gilmore, who also copped to a stickup of the Hungry Howie’s restaurant, told police that he thought the robberies would provide him the kind of reputation he apparently believes is required in the rap world.

According to a Gainesville Police Department report, Gilmore, wearing a bandanna over his face and carrying a BB gun, fled empty-handed from the Super Store convenience outlet after struggling with a store clerk over the weapon. During the encounter, the clerk, Dharmedra Patel, was shot in the temple and suffered a laceration and bleeding.

The Hungry Howie’s heist netted Gilmore about $900, records show, and he departed the crime scene on a moped driven by a 16-year-old accomplice.

The aspiring rap performer’s career is now on hold as he faces attempted armed robbery and aggravated assault charges. He is currently being held in the Alachua County Jail on the felony counts.

This is how they treat trespassers in Texas, even when the trespassers are seven years old

A 7-year-old boy died Saturday and a 30-year-old family friend was in serious condition after authorities said they were shot by a married couple who thought the off-roaders were trespassing on their property.

Donald Coffey Jr. died Saturday morning at a Houston hospital, less than two days after the boy was struck in the head with a shotgun blast, Liberty County Sheriff’s Cpl. Hugh Bishop said.

The boy, his father, his 5-year-old sister and a family friend were off-roading about 40 miles northeast of Houston late Thursday when they were shot after stopping their vehicles so the children could go to the bathroom. Donald Coffey Sr. had a pellet wound in his right shoulder. Coffey’s daughter, Destiny, was hit in the elbow but was in good condition.

Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center spokeswoman Alex Rodriguez said Patrick Cammack, 30, was upgraded from critical condition to serious condition after being shot in the head.

The married couple remained in the Liberty County Jail on Saturday on second-degree felony charges of aggravated assault. Bonds for Sheila Muhs, 45, and her husband, Gayle Muhs, also 45, were set at $25,000 apiece Saturday. They do not have an attorney, Bishop said.

The Muhs were interviewed by county investigators, Bishop said, but he did not have details on what they said.

The Houston Chronicle reported that suspects live in a small house on stilts with a rebel flag flying from the roof. A sign posted out front reads: “Trespassers will be shot. Survivers will be reshot!! Smile I will.”

Why am I not shocked to find that the couple had a rebel flag flying from the roof?

Also, if it’s OK to shoot a trick-or-treater on Halloween, it’s hard to see why it’s illegal to shoot a family that is trespassing on your land in an offroad vehicle.

***

Apparently, it’s not OK to shoot trick-or-treaters if you’re black. So the law might be unclear in the case of the slain 7-year-old.

Yet another mass killing in a state with the kind of lax gun laws that the NRA says will prevent mass killings:

According to a police report, Elizabeth Cartwright said her husband Joshua “believed that the US Government was conspiring against him. She said he had been severely disturbed that Barack Obama had been elected President.”

It isn’t the first shooting incident in recent weeks after which a crazed gunman’s political ravings have made headlines. On April 4, after Richard Poplawski killed three police officers, several of Poplawski’s friends told the Associated Press that Poplawski “feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.”

It isn’t the first shooting incident in recent weeks after which a crazed gunman’s political ravings have made headlines. On April 4, after Richard Poplawski killed three police officers, several of Poplawski’s friends told the Associated Press that Poplawski “feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.”

The AP reports that Cartwright exchanged fire with the deputies after being stunned with a Taser.

We’ll see if one of the gun nuts tries to argue in the comments that Carwright could have just as easily killed the deputies with a knife.

It seems like anyone can get a gun permit nowadays

From the New York Times:

A gunman opened fire at a Korean Christian retreat Tuesday in Riverside County, killing one and wounding three others, authorities said. The gunman was believed to be among the injured at the Kkottongnae Retreat Camp, and investigators were unsure what prompted the attack, sheriff’s spokesman Dennis Gutierrez said.

“We have some nuns that are very distraught,” Gutierrez said.

Gutierrez said at least two of the victims were critically injured. A nursing supervisor at the Inland Valley Regional Medical Center near the retreat said she had no information on any of the victims.

So now there have been nine shooting sprees since March 10, which have claimed a total of 58 lives. Nearly all of the gunmen were legally entitled to carry their weapons, and the response of some states to this carnage has been to loosen firearms restrictions:

In the Texas Capitol — where legislators can carry guns — bills easily passed the Senate in recent weeks that would allow employees to bring weapons to work as long as they leave them locked in their cars, and let those packing heat off the legal hook if they walked into a bar that didn’t have signs saying guns weren’t allowed inside.

The state also is considering allowing students licensed to carry a concealed weapon — there are about 300,000 such adults in Texas — to bring guns on campus.

Kansas plans to put a measure on its 2010 ballot that would rewrite the state constitution to make gun ownership a personal, rather than collective, right. In Tennessee, lawmakers made progress this month toward allowing guns to be carried in state and local parks.

What madness. Loosening restrictions on guns hasn’t led to fewer murders and mass killings. Passing laws that would make it legal for more people to carry guns (including in bars!) will only make it easier for deranged and unbalanced people to carry out more mass shootings.

And before the gun nuts start leaving comments, let me point out that we know that you think it would have been just as easy to carry out mass killings like the Binghamton Massacre with knives. I just don’t agree with your position.

From CNN:

The pastor of a Maryville, Illinois, church was shot to death during a service Sunday in front of horrified parishioners who then tackled the gunman, state police said.

Fred Winters, the pastor of the First Baptist Church, was shot and killed during the 8 a.m. service, and the attacker and two parishioners suffered knife wounds in the attack, authorities said.

The gunman entered during the service and walked up to the pulpit.

Winters and the gunman apparently exchanged words before the 27-year-old man fired four shots, hitting the pastor’s Bible and then the pastor, said Illinois State Police Director Larry Trent.

The gunman’s .45-caliber pistol jammed after he shot Winters, Trent said. The man then pulled out a knife before being tackled by some of the approximately 150 worshippers attending the service in southern Illinois, near St. Louis, Missouri.

Isn’t it great to live in a country where it’s so easy for people to buy guns with which to protect themselves from the crazies?

Isn’t it great that we live in a country where every man can have a gun so that he can keep his family safe?:

A man who had recently been laid off from a local hospital opened fire at his Wilmington home today, killing his five young children as well as his wife, police said.

The gunman then took his own life, according to authorities. Police said the children were an 8-year-old girl, twin 5-year-old girls and twin 2-year-old boys. LAPD Deputy Chief Kenneth Garner said police found notes inside the house in which the gunman referred to “work-related issues.”

Ervin Antonio Lupoe and his wife, Ana, were both former employees of Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles Medical Center. “They were recently terminated,” a spokesman for the hospital group confirmed.

Police entered the house and smelled gunshot residue. The bodies were found around the house. Each person apparently had been shot with a revolver. Garner said the bodies of the three girls were found in an upstairs bedroom and the bodies of the boys and the mother were found in a back bedroom. Notes found at the house suggested the case was a murder-suicide, he said.

First, the Republicans made sure that Lupoe could own a gun. Then they ran the economy into a ditch, resulting in mass layoffs. If we had either sane gun laws or sound economic policies, Ana Lupoe and her children would be alive today.

From United Press International:

Charlie Busick of Eden, N.C., told sheriff’s deputies that he had left his .45-caliber pistol on a love seat, the Greensboro News & Record reported. He said that the cat jumped on the seat and landed on the pistol, setting it off.

I’m torn on this one. While I’m all for ensuring that cats have the ability to defend themselves, I think it’s insane to allow any yahoo who wants one to own a gun. After all, this situation could easily have turned tragic if a kitten had found the gun: