(Photo by David Molnar / The Republican. As his father, Sean Connery snaps a photograph, left, Devin Connery of Lunenburg, fires a Heckler & Koch Universal Machine-Pistol at the Machine Gun Shoot and Firearms Expo sponsored by the Westfield Sportsman Club and C.O.P. Firearms and Training on Sunday. According to the Associated Press on May [...]
According to a local ABC News station on May 3rd: Authorities say a Maryland man killed himself after buying a shotgun and ammunition at a central Pennsylvania gun show. The York County coroner’s office says the unidentified man purchased the gun Saturday morning during a show at the York Expo Center, then took it outside [...]
According to the Huffington Post on Oct. 12th: DENVER — In the first detailed public remarks by any parent of the two Columbine killers, Dylan Klebold’s mother says she had no idea her son was suicidal until she read his journals after the 1999 high school massacre. Susan Klebold’s essay in next month’s issue of [...]
(We are pleased to post the following guest commentary from Freedom States Alliance affiliate, New England Coalition To Prevent Gun Violence). The gun lobby is in the middle of an intense campaign to push guns into every corner of our society. Protestors are showing up at Obama rallies with handguns in side holsters and assault [...]
Freedom States Alliance Press Release For Immediate Release August 6, 2009 Contact: Scott Vogel (312) 243-8980, scott@freedomstatesalliance.org (Chicago, IL) – Yet another concealed weapons permit holder and “legal†gun owner, George Sodini, with no prior criminal record, committed mass murder. On the evening of Aug. 4, Sodini attacked an aerobics class at the LA Fitness [...]
Arming students is ineffective at stopping a mass shooting. On Friday, April 10th, ABC News’ 20/20 investigative report demonstrated conclusively, through repeated tests, that armed students could not stop a rampage shooting even after being clued into the experiments. A real-life encounter would be even more surprising, disorienting and virtually impossible for armed students to [...]
GunGuys has posted numerous stories about individuals who use a shooting range to commit suicide. Now, such types of incidents are showing up in Canada, and gun range owners are claiming nothing can be done to stop them. We disagree. After the second gun suicide at a shooting range in 13 months, The Globe and [...]
Pro-gun Senator Jim Webb’s own aide apparently committed suicide with a gunshot to the head. According to the Washington Post on July 30th: Frederick Wayne Hutchins Jr., who headed up Sen. James Webb’s Roanoke office, was found dead this morning alongside a highway in Botetourt County, according to the sheriff’s office. Hutchins, 26, had been [...]
A double tragedy in Wisconsin leaves a community stricken with grief. According to the Associated Press: Police in Elko say a distraught teenager from Wisconsin committed suicide after accidentally shooting another boy in the head with a handgun. Investigators say the 15-year-old boy was visiting with family and was at another’s boy home across the [...]
We haven’t talked about gun suicides in awhile, but Mother Jones magazine brings up the issue in relation to the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding handgun “ownership” as an “individual right.” Alas, the number of people killed in “self-defense” with a gun is dwarfed by the number of people who commit suicide with a firearm. [...]
It happened again, this time in Florida. A person walks into a gun range, rents a gun, and shoots himself dead. One of the least-discussed aspects of gun violence is one that we keep track of on GunGuys: gun ranges becoming a place of choice for people who want to commit suicide. It’s not an [...]
Some advocates argue against bringing up the number of Americans lost in the Iraq war each year compared to the number of citizens killed by gunfire on the home front. We say why not? We have lost too many brave men and women in Iraq, far too many. The death toll for “Operation Iraqi Freedom [...]
An in-depth story by Michelle Perin in Law Enforcement Technology posted on Officer.com discusses the taboo of suicide among law enforcement professionals. Constant stress and fear of seeking counseling for mental health issues coupled with the obvious access to guns can be an explosive and deadly combination. “Ninety-seven percent (of officers’ suicides) use their own [...]
“Suicide by cop” is how most law enforcement officers describe it when a disturbed person wishes to die, but instead of taking his or her own life chooses instead to provoke an armed standoff and force police officers to use deadly force. An example is an incident that occurred Tulsa, Oklahoma where Timothy Casey, who [...]
We’ve noted this before on GunGuys.com. One of the underdiscussed aspects of our gun violence problem relates to suicides committed with firearms in the United States. And is not uncommon for people to commit suicide with a gun at a shooting range. This came to our attention again in an October 16th article in the [...]
Tragedy struck the family of former Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan last night. According to a news brief in the Chicago Tribune: Elmhurst police this morning are investigating an apparent suicide by the son of former Illinois attorney general Jim Ryan. Patrick J. Ryan, 24, was found dead in the family home Sunday evening “with [...]
As we assembled the August 23 American Shooting Gallery for GunGuys.com, we were struck by one article about a man who committed suicide at a shooting range in Michigan. “Police responded to reports of a shooting at Target Sports on Woodward Avenue in Royal Oak Wednesday,†a Michigan news report notes. “When officers arrived at [...]
Two extremely sad stories show exactly how firearms are ruining American families across the country this week. -First, in California, a family of four, including two young girls, was found shot dead in a parking lot in what appears to be a murder-suicide. The Berkeley family of four found dead in a parking lot at [...]
This is a site about gun violence and gun laws in America, so we don’t usually cover changes in gun laws overseas– what we’re concerned with is changing things here at home. But this is a bit of news we just can’t pass up. Gun guys love to point out that in Switzerland, a country [...]
Here’s a letter from two people in Wisconsin. Shooting ranges, as we’ve said before, are dangerous places. In addition to accidental shootings, there’s almost constant suicides there, and anytime you have bullets flying around, you increase the likelihood exponentially that someone, inside or outside of the range, will get shot. But there’s even more danger [...]
The NY Times has posted a followup look at the tragedy in Idaho earlier this week. A gunman was believed to have shot and killed two people and himself outside of a church there, and now police are saying he also killed his wife before the rampage. And, just like in the recent Virginia Tech [...]
Another shooting death at a gun range. Rentals are easy for almost anyone to do at gun ranges (in some states, you don’t even need a permit to rent a firearm), and so they are unfortunately magnets for suicides. In this case, if a gun rental hadn’t taken place, the suicide never would have happened. [...]
The Associated Press takes a look today at the problem of easy firearms rentals at firing ranges. We’ve talked about this problem before– while buying a gun usually requires a background check and a permit (and in some places, not even that), renting a gun has no such limitations. And as a result, people who [...]
Another study on firearms ownership has been released by the Harvard School of Public Health, this one researching the link between suicide and the availability of firearms in the home. What they found isn’t surprising, but it is very important: where more people have access to firearms, more people are killing themselves with them. In [...]
Yet another gun range is being criticized after suicides there. Like the fabled Don’s Guns, lots of gun ranges offer rental firearms to anyone to walks in the door. And as a result, those gun ranges are seeing gun violence, most commonly in the form of suicides. Late one afternoon in January, Peter Hartzel stood [...]
New evidence has come to light in the case of the gun of Pennsylvania Senator Bob Regola. You’ll remember that last Fall, Senator Regola was out of town when a boy was found dead in the woods near his house– it was a next door neighbor who’d been housekeeping while Regola was away, and Regola’s [...]
After a series of suicides at Boston Gun Range in Worchester, MA (which we reported on here), authorities had said they were going to give the range an ultimatum: keep unlicensed gun owners out of the range or close up shop. Now, it looks like the gun range would rather not cooperate: they’re going to [...]
Another week, another gun violence tragedy. This time in Arizona, where a man killed two women, one of whom was displeased with his relationship with her girlfriend. Family members of a 2004 St. Charles East graduate questioned Monday how he could shoot to death two young women and then take his own life. Joshua Mendel’s [...]
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a long piece up with a closeup look at the shooting at a rave party that happened a year ago next month. We reported on it when it first happened (and how Kyle Huff, the gunman who later killed himself, had his firearms seized by police, but then given back to [...]
Two tragic incidents rocked the country last night. Both serve as simply more tragic evidence that we’ve got to do something fast about our firearms problem. -In Philadelphia, police found four dead in a conference room after what looked to be a murder-suicide that took place during a business meeting. Police found a scene of [...]
We can’t say we disagree with this Colorado law that’s going to work to close a loophole on concealed weapons permits there, but closing a loophole on concealed weapons law is like patching a flea-infested blanket– it’s time to get rid of the whole thing. Coloradans who want to carry concealed handguns could no longer [...]
Another suicide at a gun shop, this time striking, ironically, during a “gun safety” class. A 29-year-old Thorndike Street man, who was enrolled in a gun safety course at PSMG Gun Shop on Park Avenue, fatally shot himself at the business Wednesday. Peter Hartzel, of 104 Thorndike St., was on his third day of training [...]
A new documentary is coming out about one woman’s quest to get a firearms law on the books in Maine (that would require a waiting period for young people who buy guns), and it’s getting rave reviews. Catherine Crowley tried to change a state gun law after her 18-year-old son killed himself with a shotgun [...]
Another suicide at a gun range in Massachusetts is prompting calls for stronger regulations on who can walk in and start shooting. The sign on its front door states “no permit required,†but police allege a local gun shooting range violated city regulations when it allowed a woman to walk in, obtain a gun and [...]
Two shootings rocked the country in the past week. After further investigation, both make clear that firearms are just too prevalent in our nation today. -In Pennsylvania, an Eagle Scout student obtained a rifle from his parents’ locked cabinet, took it to school, and shot himself. Authorities say the tragedy could have been even worse [...]
A new study out of Australia shows that a national gun buyback there may have been more effective than first thought. Another study on the gun buyback was released a little while ago that said no effect was seen, but this new study points out a number of different problems with the first study, and [...]
A student at a Pennsylvania high school brought a rifle to school, and then apparently killed himself with it, according to authorities. Authorities say a student brought a rifle to school and shot himself to death Tuesday at Springfield Township High School in Montgomery County in Pennsylvania. The student’s death is reported in a statement [...]
A break in the Regola case, as court documents were released earlier this week. Senator Robert Regola from Pennsylvania, you’ll remember, had his gun go missing while he was out of town. The next day, it was found in the woods behind his home– near a neighbor boy, Louis Farrell, who’d been shot in the [...]
Finally today, we’ll take another look at a case we covered yesterday. In South Carolina, Mark Turner purchased a firearm– just a day after he stepped out of a mental institution. And he then used that firearm to murder Jacquelyn Ruff. The mother of a young woman who was gunned down by a jealous acquaintance [...]
It’s not something anyone wants to remember at the University of Iowa, but it’s definitely something that no one should forget. 15 years ago, a student used a firearm there to kill five people and himself. It’s important to remember the victims of the 1991 University of Iowa campus shootings and try to emulate the [...]
The recent rash of school shootings has (rightly so) caught the country’s attention. Here’s more information on the shooting yesterday in Pennsylvania, as well as reactions to the incidents from around the country. -Two more girls have died in yesterday’s shooting, bringing the total to five. Police are saying that the gunman had a secret [...]
How many shootings in schools within a week do we need for this to be declared an epidemic? In Wisconsin, a student walked onto campus with a gun, and shot the principal. A student walked into a rural school with a gun and shot the principal several times Friday morning before he was taken into [...]
The standoff that started yesterday in Colorado is over– with tragic consequences. A gunman who killed a student hostage and then himself during a high school standoff “traumatized and assaulted” his hostages during an attack that “was of a sexual nature,” police said Thursday. Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener said Duane Morrison, 53, killed Emily [...]
The Argus Leader in Iowa has an article up taking a look at the number one preventable cause of gun deaths: firearms accidents. Arthur Tarian’s voice wavers between sorrow and frustration as he recounts the night of his brother’s fatal accident. A guest at his house was expressing a dislike of guns, so Razmik “Raz” [...]
Very sad news from West Virginia. Over the weekend, a father apparently killed his two sons and himself at a university campus. A father and his two sons died Saturday in an apparent murder-suicide at a university, authorities said. Douglas W. Pennington, 49, shot sons Logan, 26, and Benjamin, 24, multiple times, then shot himself [...]
The Agoura Hills Target Range hasn’t seen just one suicide within its walls since it opened in 1982. When Robert Kramer shot himself there on August 18th, it was the seventh suicide that’s occured at the shooting range. Over the years, Robert Kramer, 57, periodically visited the Agoura Hills Target Range. Although Jim Davis, owner [...]
The good news: Randy Tisdale of Virginia got sentenced to 10 years for straw purchasing a weapon for an alledged stalker friend of his. The bad news: the judge in the case suspended every single year of the sentence. A Hanover County judge gave a man 10 years, all suspended, yesterday for illegally purchasing a [...]
The Miami Herald has news of a new Violence Policy Center report that says most murder-suicides happen in the home, between partners, with (you guessed it) a gun. Rafael Soto neatly placed on his bed the clothes he wanted his girlfriend and himself to wear at their funeral. He left behind photographs of their kids, [...]
Philly Inquirer columnist John Grogan takes a longer look at the tragedy that happened last week in a Pennsylvania lawmaker’s home. A young boy was pet-sitting for legislator Bob Regola, when police say the boy found Regola’s weapon, and the worst happened. There had been an accident involving two boys and a loaded handgun, and [...]
A sad story from Ohio makes us ask one of the most important questions you can ask about gun violence: where did the gun come from? A man who recently sought help for depression shot and killed his girlfriend during an argument and then killed himself as his father looked on, authorities said. Rollie Morgan, [...]
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