Ronald Lee Haskell - Unfit and Dangerous Gun Owner

Ronald Lee Haskell

Reuters

A man accused of fatally shooting four children ages 4 to 14 and their parents after entering their suburban Houston home disguised as a FedEx delivery man while looking for his former wife was charged with capital murder on Thursday.

Ronald Lee Haskell, 33, went to the home searching for his former wife, who is related to the victims, and held the children at gunpoint until their parents returned, authorities said. He then brought all seven family members into a room and shot them, killing all except a teenage girl, authorities said.

Police in Logan, Utah, said in a statement that Haskell and his then-wife lived in the city from 2006 to 2013. They said they had once arrested him for domestic assault and violence but the charges were dropped after he accepted a plea deal. 

Haskell is alleged to have killed two boys ages 4 and 14, two girls ages 7 and 9, and their parents Stephen Stay, 39, and Katie, 33. Five of them were found dead and one of the children died after being flown to a hospital for treatment. A 15-year-old daughter survived the attack, the sheriff's office said.

Local media reported that the family was bound and each member shot execution style, but police would not confirm the reports.

The suspect's former wife did not live at the house and was not harmed in the incident.

Gun Huggers and Ammosexuals continue to put their foot in it

The Gun guys don't get it -- we do NOT WANT your damned guns around us when we go out to spend money.

Every new chain that bans guns is a 'win' for civilization, and a loss for vigilantes, crackpot fanatics, and those old white flabby and crabby fools who see the world through a fog of fear where they hope to get a chance to blast someone who represents the change with which they cannot cope.

From the Huff Po:

Chili's Considers New Gun Policy

Chili's is reviewing its policy on guns in its restaurants after a pro-gun group upset diners by bringing rifles to one of its Texas locations.
The restaurant chain's statement comes just days after another cadre of Texas activists, also carrying guns, prompted Chipotle to issue a statement telling customers that guns aren't welcome at any of its locations.
Chili's isn't going that far yet, but the idea is on the table. “Given the recent attention to open carry laws, we are evaluating our policy to ensure we provide a safe environment for our guests and team members,” a spokeswoman for Brinker International, Chili’s parent company, told The Huffington Post.
Brinker didn't immediately respond to a follow-up question asking what exactly Chili's policy currently states.
The company's decision to review its stance on the issue was prompted by a video that surfaced on YouTube of a group of men carrying rifles into a Chili’s in San Antonio, Texas. 


Laws about openly carrying firearms vary by state. Though Texas bans carrying handguns, it is legal to carry a rifle. The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, however, prohibits businesses with liquor licenses from allowing rifles and shotguns on their premises.

Viewed by HuffPost before it was taken down on Wednesday night, the video shows the men, each carrying at least one heavy firearm, asking to be seated. The server appears to hesitate. A woman, apparently upset by the presence of the heavy weaponry in the restaurant, appears to take photos with an iPhone of each of the men in the group and seems to angrily scold them for bringing guns into a restaurant with children. A host at the restaurant then asks them to leave.
"We'd be glad to accommodate you, we're happy to sit you and feed you," the server says. "You just have to leave your firearms outside."

Sonic's didn't like them either:

In the second video, which has also since been removed, a male employee from the Sonic asks the men to remove their guns from the dining area or leave. The men cancel their food order and depart.


UPDATE: 2:45 p.m. -- Open Carry Texas backed down on Friday afternoon, notifying members on that they are to "immediately cease" taking shotguns and rifles into private businesses unless invited to do so.

Even civilization intruding on the wild west in the 19th century did not allow guns everywhere in cities and towns.  Gun nuts appear to hold to a revisionist history of our country, and of carrying firearms, and seem to be too socially maladroit to understand without prompting what is appropriate.

Texas Concealed Carry Permit Holder Allows 5-Year-old Son to Access his Gun - Both Wounded - No Charges

News9.com - Oklahoma City, OK - News, Weather, Video and Sports | 

I realize they said any possible charges will be up to the DA, but I won't hold my breath for that.  Will you?

Texas Man Accidentally Shoots 9-Year-old Neighbor in her Home

Huffington Post

A man shooting at targets in his backyard was arrested after he accidentally hit a 9-year-old girl in the head, police in Texas say.

Cristian Manzano, 20, was firing a gun on Saturday morning when a bullet shattered his neighbor's kitchen window and struck the girl, the Dallas Morning News reports.

The victim, who was not named, remained in critical condition as of Sunday, according to the Dallas Observer. She was initially taken to Children's Medical Center in Dallas, NBC DFW reports.

Neighbors said they heard four to five gunshots, according to News 8.

Manzano has been charged with causing serious bodily injury to a child and discharging a firearm in city limits.

Texas Idiot Gun Owner Arrested for Accidentally Shooting his 4-Year-old Son

Local news with video report

Ted Nugent on the Campaign Trail with Texas Gubernatorial Candidate Greg Abbott

Abbott says Nugent helps expose his opponent's 'weaknesses' on the 2nd Amendment. | AP Photos

Politico

Texas Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott says Ted Nugent is accompanying him on the trail to expose Wendy Davis’s weakness on gun rights. 

Abbott, who has come under fire for campaigning with the controversial rocker, told reporters at an event in North Texas on Tuesday that his opponent was “suffering” for her views on the Second Amendment, and that Nugent would help voters see her as a flip-flopper. He also said Davis’s association with President Barack Obama was a bigger turn-off to Texans than his sharing the stage with Nugent. 

“Sen. Davis knows she is suffering with voters because of her flipping and flopping on 2nd Amendment gun laws, and she knows that Ted Nugent calls her out on her disregard for Second Amendment rights,” Abbott said, according to a Dallas Morning News report. “We are going to expose Sen. Davis’s weaknesses on the Second Amendment and show that in this area and in so many other areas, she represents the liberalism of Barack Obama that is so bad for Texas.”

‘Redneck’ Democrat Packs it in Over Open Carry

Proof that not all Texans are dickheads found here as Rancher, bookstore owner, and 79-year-old iconoclast, Bill Bond gets upset at Wendy Davis' real agenda.

“I’m a 79-year old rancher and I’ve got guns. I’m not afraid of guns,” he says. “But I think Texas as a culture is not with history, and I think Texas as a gun culture is in the wrong place. I’m not for shooting people. I’m not afraid of anything. I don’t carry guns. I’m tired of killing game, even.” When he thinks about the rest of the country seeing pictures of Gov. Perry shooting and posing with guns, he says, “that image of Texas is abhorrent to me. And I’m a redneck!”

Texas Man Who Shot Cop During No-knock Raid Will Not be Charged for the Shooting

Henry Magee / KBTX screenshot



The Daile Caller

Henry Magee, a 28-year-old Texan who accidentally shot and killed a police officer during a no-knock raid on his home, will not be indicted on murder charges, according to a grand jury.

Burleson County police raided Magee’s home in December after receiving a tip from an informant that he was in possession of drugs. Five pounds of marijuana were found the premises.

Police did not knock before entering the home, and they executed the search before sunrise, when it was still dark outside. Magee’s lawyer told the grand jury that his client thought the police were burglars, and he fired his gun to protect his girlfriend, who was pregnant. The bullet struck and killed Deputy Adam Sowders.

The grand jury determined that there was not enough evidence to charge Magee with murder. He was indicted for possession of illegal drugs while in possession of a deadly weapon, however.

The lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, stressed that the accidental shooting would not have occurred if police had attempted the raid in the daylight, or identified themselves first.

Texas Gun Owner Who Negligently Shot Two High School Students Gets Probation

Nicholas "Nicko" Tijerina exits the 139th District Court after watching Dustin Wesley Cook receive three years of supervised release after pleading no contest to criminal negligence charges Monday Feb. 4, 2014 at the 139th District Court in the Hidalgo County Courthouse in Edinburg. Cook accidentally, but negligible shot Edson Amaro and Nicholas Tijerina at Harwell Middle School when playing basketball outside the campus on Dec. 12, 2011. Photo by Gabe Hernandez/gabrielh@themonitor.com

The Monitor

Dustin Wesley Cook, 38, was spared jail time and will instead serve three years of supervised release after pleading no contest to criminal negligence charges during an emotional court hearing Monday morning.

Cook, an Edinburg marksman, was target shooting toward the school from about a mile away when he struck the boys Dec. 12, 2011. The gunshots left Nicholas “Nicko” Tijerina, then 13, paralyzed and Edson Amaro, then 14, with serious internal organ damage.

Nicko and his mother, who moved to Houston after the shooting, returned to face Cook in court with other family members. Edson, who still suffers ongoing physical problems from the shooting, woke up in too much pain to appear, said Assistant District Attorney Gracie Reyna.

Cook was remorseful as he met the Tijerinas for the first time before the courtroom and publicly apologized.

“I’ve spent the last two years praying for you to recover, as well as Edson,” he told Nicko. “I understand your anger and your frustration and I read about a year ago in the newspaper where you had mentioned (me not) reaching out. I tried since day one, but I couldn’t because of the case.

“If I could go back, 1,000 times, I would.”

In a statement emailed to the media after the hearing, Cook reiterated his apology but maintained that he had been neither reckless nor negligent in the shooting. The Tijerina and Amaro families both have separate civil lawsuits pending against him, seeking monetary damages.

He should go to jail for ten years for that stubborn refusal to admit his fault. How dare he maintain that he was neither reckless nor negligent?

Open Carry in Texas

KiiiTV.com South Texas, Corpus Christi, Coastal Bend

Lawful Texas Gun Owner Accidentally Shoots and Kills His Neighbor - No Charges

Debra Mishler was killed in an accidental shooting around 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, January 5, 2014. Atascosa County Sheriff David Soward said he didn’t expect charges to be filed.

Local news reports

Tragedy strikes early in the year as Debra Mishler, 50, dies from an accidental gunshot wound to the abdomen.

A relative of Mishler's and another man were allegedly examining a .308 caliber rifle in their mobile home adjacent to Mishler's on Fern Hollow off State Highway 173, four miles west of Jourdanton around 9:30 p.m. on Sunday. One of the men allegedly pulled the trigger of the gun, thinking it was not loaded, inside the mobile home. The gun was loaded, says Atascosa

County Sheriff David Soward, and the bullet shot through a bathroom wall and struck the victim on her porch as she was walking into her house next door.

Sheriff Soward said Mishler was helped into a private vehicle and rushed toSouth Texas Regional Medical Center where she died while in route. "It's a classic example of someone treating a weapon as unloaded when in fact it wasn't," he added.

Sheriff Soward does not expect any charges to be filed in the incident.

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas): 'Liberal Tears' Are The Best Gun Lubricant

Opposing Views

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) recommended“liberal tears” as the best lubricant for cleaning guns in his most recent post on Twitter.

Stockman, who is running in the Republican primary against Sen. John Cornyn, tweeted a picture Monday of a spray can marked “liberal tears” and a gun. In the caption below the picture, he wrote that liberal tears worked as the best gun lubricant.

Stockman has been trying to win over Texans by supporting gun rights, and by being more aggressive about them than Cornyn. While Cornyn was endorsed by the National Rifle Association earlier in December, Stockman was endorsed by the Gun Owners of America, a group considered to be more assertive than the NRA.

“The right to keep and bear arms is granted by God,” Stockman wrote in a statement against the Arms Trade Treaty.

In May, the outspoken gun proponent even gave away a Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle via his Twitter.

“Grab this gun before Obama does,” the tweet read.

Texas Gun Store Burglarized Three Times; 17 Weapons Stolen

Texas Man Shoots the ex-Wife and Kills Himself

Local news reports

A man apparently shot and wounded his ex-wife inside her Pearland home Wednesday before fatally shooting himself, authorities said.

Brazoria County Sheriff's deputies responding to a shooting found the two about 3 p.m. at her home in the 2400 block of Woodbury.

The man was dead and his estranged wife was taken by Life Flight helicopter to Memorial Hermann Hospital. Her condition wasn't known Wednesday night but deputies said she was still alive.

Detectives said the case remains under investigation and they have not officially confirmed a possible motive. But, they believe it was an attempted murder-suicide. There were no signs of forced entry into the woman's home and the estranged couple was found together with a weapon.

Nice Christmas decorations. I imagine he did them, but then when it all got to be too much for him, he took out the gun. 

Of course the meticulous record-keeping by the state of Texas will ensure that if the dead gun owner had had a concealed carry license that fact is recorded. They wouldn't want any anomalies or omissions in their statistics.

Texas Shooting Spree - 5 Dead

More on the Texas 5-Year-old - Babysitter Charged

Orange County, Texas, Sheriff's Office. Melissa Ann Ringhardt, 19, of Vidor, Texas, was charged with abandoning or endangering a child after 5-year-old John Read shot and killed himself with her gun Monday, authorities said.

NBC News

A teenage babysitter was arrested Tuesday and charged in the death of a 5-year-old Texas boy who accidentally shot himself with the babysitter's gun while she was napping, authorities said.

Melissa Ann Ringhardt, 19, of Vidor was being held in the Orange County Jail on a felony charge of abandoning or endangering a child, the county sheriff's office said in a statement. She could face a sentence of six months to two years if convicted

The sheriff's office said Ringhardt, who lives with the boy's family, left her semiautomatic .40-caliber handgun on a coffee table when she went into a bedroom to take a nap Monday afternoon. When she woke up, she couldn't immediately find the boy, identified as John Read, according to the sheriff's office. She eventually discovered him dead in the living room, it said.

Because the home has no telephone, Ringhardt carried John and a 6-month-old child, whom she was also watching and who wasn't identified, about a block to his grandparents' home to call 911, the sheriff's office said. John was declared dead there when emergency crews arrived.

Ringhardt told investigators she had the gun because she was frightened of being home alone, the sheriff's office said. 

No phone and no cell phone either? How is that?

This girl is another victim of the gun rights movement. She believed the lie that having a gun is a good way to provide for your safety.  Too often, it's not.

Texas 5-Year-old Dead - No Charges

Beaumont Enterprise

A 5-year-old boy was found killed by a single-shot wound to the head in Vidor at approximately 2:45 p.m. Monday.

According to Chief Deputy Clint Hodgkinson with the Orange County Sheriff's Office, they received a call to the at approximately 2:45 p.m. on a call of an unresponsive child on Scott Drive in North Vidor.

Investigators say the shooting happened in the 1200 block of Roberts Road. The child was being watched by a babysitter at his parent's home when the shooting occurred.

Without access to a phone, the babysitter carried the child through the woods to the grandparent's home on Scott street.

The gun-nut dad probably kept his gun under a pillow and instructed the kid to never touch it when daddy's not home. Or maybe it was in the bedroom nightstand or a closet which would require the little boy to climb on a chair in order to reach the fascinating item.

One thing for sure is the gun was not locked in a safe where it should have been.  But it Texas that doesn't matter.

I'll bet dad had a concealed carry permit too. They're easy to get down Texas way.

Gun Rights Rally to Break Long Alamo Tradition

ABC News

This is how to make another gun rally in gun-friendly Texas stand out: Tell everybody to bring their rifles and shotguns to the Alamo, the state's most popular attraction, which sits downtown in the country's seventh-largest city. And be sure to invite the state's gun-friendliest politician, who also happens to hold the keys to the historic site.

When the organizers of "Come and Take It San Antonio!" made plans for a display of long guns Saturday, this setting seemed ideal but the event is now drawing attention for breaking a century-long tradition against public demonstrations at the shrine of Texas liberty, where Col. William Travis and 200 Texas defenders famously died in a siege with the Mexican army in 1836. Such public displays have usually been relegated to an adjacent plaza.

Some are asking whether a pro-gun group has gone too far in extolling firearms rights, a feat considered near impossible in Texas. And whether a politician may have been too willing to accommodate them.

"We certainly consider the Alamo our family cemetery," said Lee Spencer White, president of the Alamo Defenders' Descendants Association. "Our guys died there and we take it very seriously."

Inside the weathered stone mission church where the Texans made their last stand, "You instantly become reverent," she said. "You feel the sacrifice and the emotions of those who died there. You can't help but leave feeling moved and changed forever."

But rally organizers say the site fits their cause, protesting a San Antonio local ordinance they say impinges on firearms rights.

"We're doing this to show that we're not going to back down," said Victoria Montgomery, a spokeswoman for Open Carry Texas, one of the groups behind the event.

Texas Teen Indicted in Friend's Accidental Shooting Death

Local news reports further to our original post



These boys didn't stand a chance, growing up in the Texas gun world where boys will be boys and drinkin' and shootin' critters is just what you do.

I noticed how the distraught teen already had all the makings of a self-centered gun nut. With his best friend dead, he was panicky about what would happen to him. "Am I gonna die?"  He probably learned that from his daddy and his granddaddy, just like he learned gun safety from them.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

An Armed Society is a Polite Society - Texas Style

Local news reports

Police were looking for a suspect Monday after a man was shot to death during an argument at a Mexican restaurant in Dallas.

The shooting happened Sunday night after the two men argued inside the restaurant.

One of the men went outside, got a handgun out of his vehicle, returned to the restaurant and opened fire, police said.

The victim, whose name wasn’t immediately released, was taken to a hospital where he later died.