Dressed as Santa, Bruce Jeffrey Pardo walked up to his ex-in-laws' home in Covina, California, on Christmas Eve and knocked on the door.
Pardo, 45, with a gun in one hand and a wrapped present in the other, began shooting indiscriminately, police said at a news conference Thursday.
He sprayed the living room with bullets.Apparently bitter over an ugly divorce, Pardo snapped. After shooting up the in-laws' place, he reportedly went to a friend's house and turned the gun on himself. One report said two handguns were recovered at each scene, but no mention of where they came from or what he was doing with four guns.
I find those questions of interest. Perhaps it will come out later, but I suspect Mr. Pardo was one of the millions of law abiding gun owners; at least he was until two days ago. The stats that have been presented on this blog by commenters indicating how rare an event this is, to me are suspect. Although this is an overly dramatic example, the problem is still too many guns in the hands of too many people, many of whom are ill equipped to handle the responsibility.
Another way to look at it is if the misuse of guns by the lawful gun owner is really rare, we've still got a big problem for the simple reason that there are so many gun owners. A small percentage of 100 million, for example, is a big problem
Let me be perfectly clear. My own, extremely biased opinion is there are too many guns in the hands of too many people and something should be done about it.
What's your opinion?
