Some neighbors told the Lebanon Daily News they heard or saw the children — a 10-year-old boy and girls ages 2 and 6 — running from the house and screaming “Daddy shot Mommy!” shortly before the 911 emergency center was alerted at 6:20 p.m.
Debbie Mise, who lives nearby, said she heard a strange sound followed by the screams of the children. “I heard something heavy drop or fall, and then right away I heard the kids screaming, but I thought they were playing,” Mise said. “It was loud. But it didn’t sound like a pop.”
The backstory:
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Her permit to carry a gun was revoked by Lebanon County Sheriff Michael DeLeo on Sept. 20, 2008.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.
This is, like, three types of crazy. First off, I don't care what anybody thinks about Second Amendment rights, there's no way I'd keep my kid at a game where a parent was openly armed, not unless Al Qaeda had invaded and we were all ironed up. Have you seen how pissed off some parents can get at these games? "That was no foul!" Bang! We've already had a parent killed by fists at a child hockey game, do we really want any of them packin' heat?
And what if some stupid kid grabs the gun, thinks its a toy, bang! That's a headline that come come from a blue state just as easily as a red.
Second type of crazy: a $1,000,000 lawsuit for twenty-four days without a gun permit? After bringing one to a game like that? Give me a break. She should have just gotten on the Teaparty gravy train and become a Glenn Beck star for a month, made those legal fees back in a jif and then some.
Then there's the crazy husband himself. Now, maybe this proves she needed to carry a gun, to protect against him, although I'd argue a concealed defense would work just as well. But to me this is a story about the tragedy of gun culture itself.
When such a family believes that guns can be relied upon to solve problems beyond, maybe, household defense in a high crime area, I don't want to be their neighbor. It's just not healthy thinking, it's caveman or reptile brain thinking. Sure, one can argue that the gun used in the murder-suicide "ended" things for Meleanie and Scott Hain, maybe the "ultimate solution" for their marital disagreements, but it sure has created a lifetime of problems for their poor orphaned children.
There are @ 30,000 gun-related deaths every year in America. Is that a number that should concern anyone? How about that @ 55% of these are suicides? (Assume that includes murder-suicides?)
I'm not for blanket U.S. gun elimination and stand with the President on Second Amendment rights. I do believe states should regulate as needed by localities. Most of all, I believe that domestic gun ownership should be treated by our culture as drunk driving has come to be treated: uncool and dangerous.
After all, having a gun in the home makes it three times more likely that you or someone you care about will be murdered by a family member or intimate partner.
Family values?
4 comments:
Trickle Down Theory:
The sad, crazy gun culture has trickled down into the lives of middle America, soccer moms and the daily routines of childhood.
At its core, this is what the election of 2008 was meant to turn around. That is why we voted the way we did.
With or wIthout the gun in the house would the outcome possibly changed? Your title is spot on, guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Guns work in crime prevention by the MAD principle. You're less likely to rob someone without a gun than with.
I don't own a gun, and probably never will. That is until they come to take away my health insurance plan. :p
People Kill People is meant as irony, of course, because faster, easier to use, harder to deter weapons make people kill people more often, per the statistics. As for MAD for guns, I'm sure it works in some instances and locations. Sleepy suburbs would not appear to be one of them. And of course, when that MAD culture is promoted as a way to solve problems, like in the gangland 1920's Chicago or 1980's inner city culture, murder stats go up.
The real lesson is that whether or not they hurt, guns certainly did not solve this soccer mom's problems. Not one little bit.
I'd love to know the statistics - how many guns actually do prevent violence vs. how many guns lead to violence. I suspect owning a gun doesn't make anybody safer.
But all you have to do is look around - any poster for a new TV series, trailer for a movie or video game usually has the tough looking hero standing proud with his 2nd Amendment right in hand. We're a gun-obsessed culture.
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