Guns, Carried Openly or Concealed, Threaten Our Safety

[iverglas]

104. what - how did I miss this?

She's dead??

Lived by the sword, and died by it ... ?

I hadn't clicked on the article because it didn't seem, from the excerpts, to be about her, and the thread had just gone its merry way around the subject as usual.

In October 2009, Hain was gunned down in her home by her husband who, after firing six shots into her with his handgun (hers was in a backpack hanging off a door), went upstairs and ended his own life with a shotgun blast. Neighbors said they heard the couple's children run from the house shouting "Daddy shot mommy!"

Well damned if it wasn't one of those very homicide-suicides I was babbling on about.

Not likely ever possible to know much about her life, but hard to think she wasn't victimized in her home before this. And she could have found help that would very possibly have saved her life -- the danger to a woman who leaves an abusive man, especially one with guns, should never be underestimated -- but instead she devoted her energies to harassing her neighbours with her gun and wasting the public's time with her stupid lawsuits over it. All that time and energy and undoubtedly money spent on her fixation with dragging a gun around everywhere she went, and well, it's hard to say anything else without both stating the obvious and appearing insensitive. The point is that it's a huge tragedy, that she wasted her life doing what it did, and all her association with guns did in the end was get her killed.

I suppose she could have spent her time embroidering throw pillows, and her husband could have suffocated her and then himself. I know we all get the point about firearm homicide-suicides. Once you've killed your victim, you need to be able to finish yourself off pretty quickly or you just might not have the guts to do it. Taking a bus crosstown to jump off a bridge isn't likely your best plan.

She was talking to a friend via webcam when she was killed. Her loaded handgun was hanging in the kitchen. She had children aged 2, 6 and 10. Hard to think of a better poster child for the cause, I guess.