A day or so late

Given that women are more likely to be killed by a spouse or lover if there is a firearm in the house. We can't forget this study either which showed that having a gun in house means a woman is eight times more likely to be killed.

First, show her how much you love her with your gun.

Then, you give her a really nice burial.

Well, you like to keep reminding us that firearms are "just tools": well, it seems it is a tool which might predict mortality in an abusive relationship.

And the LATEST Murder Suicide with a Firearm IS.......

This is perfectly acceptable to our gun nuts. So long as they continue to embrace their fetish objects, without let or hindrance, any amount of gun violence is excusable in their eyes.  Anything is ok, so long as nothing comes between them and the firearm they love more than life itself - other people's lives anyway.

From the Silicon Valley Mercury News and the Sacramento Bee:

Murder-suicide at meeting of Sacramento model airplane buffs

By Bill Lindelof and Kim Minugh

Sacramento Bee

mercurynews.com

Posted:   02/22/2012 10:26:08 AM PST

Two men were killed Tuesday night in a murder-suicide in the parking lot of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District headquarters, Sacramento police officials report.
The Sacramento County Coroner's Office on Wednesday morning identified the dead as Robert Gully, 73, of West Sacramento and Jerome Votaw, 62, of Sacramento.
Police spokesman Andrew Pettit said the men were not SMUD employees but were among a group of people using the facilities for a meeting. Police believe that the men were part of a group of model airplane enthusiasts.
Pettit provided these details about the fatal incident:
Police received a call at 7:18 p.m. about a verbal altercation among two men and a woman in the parking lot outside SMUD's West Building.
Gully pulled out a handgun and shot Votaw at least once in the upper body.
The woman ran away toward the lobby, and the gunman shot multiple rounds at her.
She reached the lobby to take cover while the gunman continued to shoot at her, shattering glass in the lobby.
An acquaintance of the shooter came out of the building and tried to talk to him. As they were talking in the parking lot, police officers arrived and Gully shot himself.
Both Gully and Votaw were pronounced dead at the scene. The woman was not injured.
After the shooting, police talked to "a handful" of witnesses in the lobby, including a security guard.
Pettit declined to discuss the subject of the dispute pending an investigation by homicide detectives, but said they are investigating the possibility of a love triangle.

He said no one else was injured. -

Another Mass Shooting

We have too many guns; our gun culture is toxic and destructive, not the noble and heroic fantasy of the gun lunatics who are delusional in ignoring the reality of too many guns in this country and too many shootings.  We could reduce these occurrences, if not eliminate them entirely, if we choose to do so. It works consistently everywhere it has been attempted to reduce gun violence by reducing the number of guns in circulation.

But gun nuts put their fantasy fetish objects and their silly daydreams of how powerful and heroic they are over the plain and obvious reality of gun violence in this country. It hurts people far more often than it saves anyone, and when it is used to save, there are so very often better means to accomplish the same end.

THIS is the essence of our gun culture; people armed to the teeth doing what they think is right instead of relying on law enforcement and courts to more sanely, more peacefully, and less emotionally resolve conflicts.  I have no doubt every domestic abuser believes he is right, every person who wrongly shoots someone believes they were doing something important and necessary.  Guns in the hands of people kill people, and without guns in their hands, fewer people succeed at killing other people.

From NBC.com and the wire services by way of MSNBC.com:

2 dead, 3 wounded during fire, shooting at Los Angeles home

Patrick T. Fallon / AP

Firefighters battled a fire in the East Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles on Thursday afternoon at a house where two people were shot and killed and three were wounded.

A gunman and one of his victims were found dead inside the smoldering remains of a Los Angeles house on Thursday. Three other gunshot victims were rescued from the burning home earlier that afternoon by police and firefighters, authorities said.
The bodies of the gunman and victim were found after the fire was out and authorities were able to search the house, a 1917 single-story rambler in LA's East Hollywood neighborhood, the Associated Press reported.
The three other victims – two 38-year-old women and a 34-year-old man – had been shot by the time police and firefighters arrived. They were transported in serious condition to an undisclosed hospital and were expected to survive.
Read more at NBCLosAngeles.com
The incident began shortly before 1 p.m. when emergency personnel responded to the home. Firefighters did not enter the home because they worried the gunman was still at large, fire Capt. Jaime Moore told the AP.
Authorities said the shooting was called "domestically motivated" and said the gunman had a relationship with one of the surviving victims, the AP reported.
Authorities cordoned off the block and nearby residents were evacuated, said Los Angeles Police Department Commander Andrew Smith. Some neighbors were concerned that gusty winds could spread the flames in the dense East Hollywood neighborhood.
It took about 150 firefighters and two and a half hours to fight the blaze, according to the Los Angeles Times. When the fire was out, cadaver dogs combed the scene for other possible bodies.
Neighbor Angelica De Paz, speaking in Spanish, told the AP that she was about to run errands when she saw a man kick in the front door of the house where the incident took place. The man was in his 20s or 30s, she said, and he wore a black shirt and blue jeans.
About five minutes later, De Paz said, she received a call from a neighbor who said the house was on fire.
"I thought it was a joke," De Paz said.
Another neighbor, Darwin Urbina, told the AP that he saw a man of the same description sitting on a curb outside the house shortly before he heard shots.
"He had this intent look," Urbina said. "He just stared at me for a while."
Urbina, who has lived in the neighborhood for a decade, described it as marked by gangs and drugs.

Mike Meadows / AP

Firefighters battle a blaze at a Los Angeles home on Thursday afternoon. A 34-year-old man and two 38-year-old women were shot; police removed them from the home and sent them to the hospital. They were in serious condition but were expected to survive, officials said.

Another Florida Gun Nut Violently Goes Off the Rails

One more person who should never have had a gun.

We have too many guns, and too many people committing gun violence out of emotional impulses that would be better managed without ease of access to deadly weapons.

I'm sure that right before his gun ruined his life and traumatized the people around him, this guy was sure he was a good person, doing good and important things with his freedom and his firearm.

Of course, he wasn't.  And of course now he is as far from free as he can possibly be, but there is that tantalizing ILLUSION that comes with guns.  This man who had a promising professional career ahead of him has proven once again that there is no correlation between guns and freedom, and far, far to frequent a correlation to guns and violence and ruination, and this is never more true than in states where the gun fantasy and fetish is strongest -- like Florida. We're lucky this didn't end up yet ANOTHER mass shooting, or murder / suicide, or that the shots fired didn't hit someone entirely unintentional.

From the Miami Herald and the AP:

Fla law student being held on $1M bond in shooting

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/16/2591854/law-student-being-held-on-1m-bond.html#storylink=cpyThe Associated Press

The Associated PressNAPLES, Fla. -- An Ave Maria law school student is being held on $1 million bond after authorities say he shot at his roommate and threatened his ex-girlfriend.
Jail records show 25-year-old Robert Christopher Ringley was charged Friday with attempted murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. His next court date is Feb. 6. It was not immediately known if he has an attorney.
The Naples Daily News reports ( http://bit.ly/wMey84) that the Collier County Sheriff's Office says Ringley forced his ex-girlfriend and his roommate to their knees on the street, pointing the gun at them.
The woman fled to an apartment to call authorities. That's when police say Ringley ordered his roommate to his feet and fired several shots in the air before pointing the gun at him.
No one was injured.

Arizona Murder Suicides

I'm still working my way through the A's for murder suicides by state, just looking at recent murder suicides that involves shootings.  While I see the occasional stabbing, strangling, nearly all of these have been incidents involving gun violence, overwhelmingly so.  In every case one or more people are the victims of a shootist who later kills himself or herself - the shootists are mostly men - or tries to shoot themselves.

Guns are clearly being used frequently to take the freedom to life and liberty and the pursuits of happiness away from other people by gun carriers.  Some of them are legal gun owners, occasionally even a member of law enforcement, and some are not.  Clearly, we are not keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals who are acting on an impulse, who are acting in anger, or despair, or some other toxic combinations of emotion.  But whether they are killing themselves, or other men, women and children, they are taking lives that are not theirs by right to take. They are injuring other people with those firearms.

The number of Defensive Gun Use are rare, are minimal, and often could be accomplished with other means.  The argument that we hold people accountable AFTER these events instead of preventing them from occurring is not an acceptable resolution to this problem.  Stricter, more stringent gun regulation IS a fair way of establishing a fair and effective balance between competing rights.  No one is willing to admit they are not the right person to own guns, they are not safe; but clearly there are people who are not safe, who do not respect the rights of others when they are emotional.  Enough is enough; we can stop this.  Maybe not every single one, but many of these can be prevented.  These are primarily crimes of GUN VIOLENCE, far more so than any other instrumentality.  That cannot and should not be ignored, just because gun nuts don't want to face facts.

It's time and past time we do so.

Another Murder Suicide

Another murder suicide, another shooting of two people.

We have too many of these.

From PA CBS news 21:

UPDATE: Two dead in apparent murder-suicide in Windsor Township

UPDATE:

Authorities say a Windsor Township man shot his wife to death and then turned the gun on himself.

York Area Regional Police say officers were dispatched to the Windsor Township home at about 2:15 p.m. Tuesday after a man called 911 and said he had shot his wife and planned to kill himself.

Police say the woman's body was found inside the home and the man's body outside.

Deputy Coroner Claude Stabley ruled the deaths a murder-suicide. He said the woman may have been suffering from a terminal illness.

The names of the victims are being withheld pending notification of relatives.

Officer Peter Montgomery said the case appears unrelated to the 2002 slaying nearby of 33-year-old Stacey Farmer, who was considered a potential witness in another homicide case.