Gun Range Suicides

Each year, millions of people go to gun ranges and there are generally a few suicides. One gun range manager says he refuses service to customers because "it didn't feel right." (AP File Photo)

Lehigh Valley News

If there's one thing Ken LeVan has learned over the past 20 years, it's how to read people.

LeVan is manager of the Pennsylvania Law Enforcement Officers Association's 

Firing Line indoor shooting range in North Whitehall Township. The setup is similar to that of The Heritage Guild in Williams Township, where two 54-year-old men have used guns to commit suicide since April.

LeVan said he has had to refuse service to customers at The Firing Line, 4671 Egypt Road, on several occasions because "it didn't feel right." He recalled one situation in which a man appeared nervous, pacing back and forth.

"He was soaking wet from perspiration," he said.

He turned the man away, avoiding what could have been a bad situation, he said.

The gun range hasn't had any incidents in the 28 years it's been open.

Mindy McCready Kills Herself with a Gun

CNN

Country music star Mindy McCready was found dead Sunday at her home in Arkansas from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, the local sheriff's office said in a statement. She was 37. 

Deputies from the Cleburne County Sheriff's Office were dispatched to a report of gunshots fired Sunday afternoon and found McCready's body on the front porch, the statement read. 

McCready leaves behind two boys, one of whom is 10 months old. The infant's father, record producer David Wilson, died of an apparent suicide last month.

Military Suicides - Worse and Worse

From the Trenches World Report

The most extensive study yet by the U.S. government on suicide among military veterans shows more veterans are killing themselves than previously thought, with 22 deaths a day – or one every 65 minutes, on average.

The study released on Friday by the Department of Veterans Affairs covered suicides from 1999 to 2010 and compared with a previous, less precise VA estimate that there were roughly 18 veteran deaths a day in the United States.


More than 69 percent of veteran suicides were among individuals aged 50 years or older, the VA reported.

This is a disgrace. Perpetual war is to blame.

Gun Rights Increase Suicides

The Arizona Republic

Pain radiated through the phone when Kristi Stadler called the crisis hotline in the wee hours one May morning.

"I would like to kill myself," she told Luis, the voice at the other end of the line. "I know that life is an option for me, but I know it's been an option for the past 12 years, and it hasn't gotten any better, and when it does, it always gets bad again."

Terry Stadler tears up as he talks about his daughter's 12-year battle with mental illness. She fought it with everything she had, he says. With repeated hospitalizations, with medication and an electrical implant designed to help with her deep depression. With crisis counseling and years of work with psychiatrists. She fought hard, her father says, right up until that day in May 2009 when the Phoenix Police Department handed her a loaded gun. Fifteen hours later, Kristi Lee Stadler was dead.

Knowing that she had a history of mental illness.

Knowing that she had threatened suicide two months earlier.

Instead, police did the requisite "Brady check," verifying that Kristi had never been ordered by a judge into treatment, and proceeded to track her down to let her know she could come get her gun.
Kristi picked up her gun and bullets on May 7, 2009.

She died just after 4 a.m. on May 8.

This sad story is a good illustration of how guns assist suicides. The biased pro-gun folks will say anything to defend and protect their beloved guns, but the obvious fact is gun availability makes suicide attempts more likely to succeed.

One of the things they're worried about is that people with minor psychological problems will also be restricted if we try to do something about this.  In successfully striving to prevent that, they are responsible for cases like this.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

Shooting Range Suicide Calls for Background Checks to Rent Guns

Michigan Live reports

As family of Mark Sobie grieve his death after a self-inflicted gunshot wound last week at a Wyoming shooting range, they question why no laws prevented him from renting a firearm.

A background check, they say, would have shown the 43-year-old's felony bank robbery conviction, an offense that led him to serve 30 months in federal prison. The criminal record prevents him from purchasing or possessing a gun.

“We would have had a chance,” Sobie’s sister, Christine Jones, said Thursday, Nov. 8, a day before family were to gather for his funeral. “They could have called police.” 

Officers from the Wyoming Police Department responded to Silver Bullet Firearms Oct. 30 and found Sobie suffering from a gunshot wound. He could not be revived and was later pronounced dead. 

Sobie’s death marked the second at the range, 5121 South Division Ave., in four years. Both were ruled suicides.

Well that's two more we didn't know about. I hope Baldr is keeping count, I know no one else is. Yet, the pro-gun folks keep telling us how rare these things are. The truth is they have no idea how many there are.

In addition to the background check for renting a gun, which I agree is a good idea, there should be a 24-hour waiting period.  These two requirements would save lives.

What's your opinion?  Don't you get a little tired of the pro-gun objections to things that would save lives but inconvenience them a little bit?  I do?

Please leave a comment.

Another Gun Range Suicide in Central Florida

News 4 Jax reports.

Authorities are investigating after a man fatally shot himself in the head at a central Florida gun range.

Orange County deputies said the 45-year-old man arrived at the gun range Friday night and began shooting in the practice lanes. The Orlando Sentinel reports he then shot himself in the head. He later died at the hospital. His name has not been released.

Authorities are investigating whether the shooting was accidental or intentional.

I guess it could have been accidental. But, my bet is it was another of the fairly frequent gun range suicides. I'll bet they're just about as frequent as the guys who get caught trying to take guns on planes in their carry-on.

Remember the mother and son story? That was in central Florida too.

What's your opinion? What's more frequent, gun-range suicides or confiscated guns at the airport?

Please leave a comment.

Odd Suicide at the Gun Range

Zorroy offered the link to this one. "Hey, Mike--I know how much of a kick you get out of these gun range suicides, so thought you'd be interested in this odd story:"

A man is in critical condition after shooting himself in the head five or six times at a Panama City gun range.

The Bay County sheriff's office says the shooting was self-inflicted but doesn't know yet if it was accidental or on purpose.

The man walked into Jays Guns and Accessories on Highway 390 near the old airport to use the range just before one o clock. First responders got the call half an hour later that someone had been shot multiple times in the head.

Paramedic's rushed the man to Bay Medical.

Jays Guns and Accessories is divided into a gun shop and a shooting range. Major Tommy Ford of the Bay County Sheriff’s Department told NewsChannel 7 no one was in the range with the man at the time.

"The employee of the shop was watching from the shop side separated by the wall. There were no other customers in the store and no other subjects shooting in the range area at the time."

Authorities haven't released much information about the man yet, but we do know he is in his mid twenties and carried an out-of-state driver's license.

Odd, to say the least. Do you think it's possible to shoot yourself repeatedly in the head?

Rare Japanese Shooting

The BBC reports on a shooting in Yokohama, Japan in which a man wounded three before taking his own life. The title of the article speaks volumes. Three hurt in rare Japan shooting.

The gunman had taken refuge in a building in a residential area which the police surrounded.

A police spokesman said one of the injured men was in a critical condition and the other two were lightly wounded.

Japanese media reported the violence appeared to be gang related. Shootings are rare in Japan, where there are strict gun control laws.

Police named the gunman as Kenji Hayashi, a 62-year-old member of the Inagawa-kai, a large Japanese organised crime group.

He had identified himself to police after they surrounded him.

Police entered the building when Mr Hayashi stopped talking and they found him dead.

"We stormed the building and found the man on the floor with a revolver, bleeding from his right ear," AFP news agency quoted a police spokesman as saying.

What gun violence there is in Japan tends to be associated with the Japanese mafia, known as yakuza.

Gun violence is extremely rare in Japan because guns are extremely rare, at least by American standards. The correlation between gun availability and violent gun incidents in a given society seems indisputable to me. Why do pro-gun folks keep denying it?

If Japan were suddenly flooded with guns, do you think the violence would increase or stay the same? If Japan were flooded with guns do you think the incidents of suicide would increase or stay the same?

Please leave a comment.