Gun-toting soccer mom, husband found shot dead, "Daddy shot Mommy!"

[Liberal_in_LA]

**UPDATE, this story is being discussed in 'late breaking' also. Didn't notice before I posted***

Gun-toting soccer mom, husband found shot dead

LEBANON, Pa. (AP) — A soccer mom who gained national attention when she openly carried a loaded gun to her 5-year-old daughter's game was shot dead Wednesday along with her husband in what appeared to be a murder-suicide, police said.

Meleanie Hain and Scott Hain were pronounced dead Wednesday night at their home in Lebanon, about 80 miles west of Philadelphia.

The couple's three children were home at the time but weren't hurt, police said. They were taken to stay with friends and relatives.

According to the Lebanon Daily News, several neighbors said they witnessed the children, ages 2, 6 and 10, run from the house shouting, "Daddy shot Mommy!" shortly before 911 was called at 6:20 p.m.

Meleanie Hain, 31, and Scott Hain, 33, had been having marital problems for about a week, neighbor Mark Long said. Scott Hain had left the couple's home on Tuesday, and Meleanie Hain didn't know where he was, but he returned Wednesday, Long said.

Autopsies on the Hains were to be conducted Thursday, coroner Dr. Jeffrey Yocum said.

Meleanie Hain made headlines after she attended a children's soccer game in a park on Sept. 11, 2008, with a handgun in plain view holstered on her hip, upsetting other parents.



http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-10-08-soccer-mom-gun-murder-suicide_N.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno

[yodoobo]

1. How sad. Probably shot with her own gun

This is one of those stories, that you knew would not end well.

[Barack_America]

2. So sad for the kids.

[Echo In Light]

7. Something like this is bound to fuck em up badly

[izquierdista]

18. They are more fortunate than the Goebbels kids

When things go bad for right-wingers -- bloodier than a Quentin Tarentino flick.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

3. Her carrying a gun has little to do with her being murdered while her children were home.

[Taverner]

4. Except that it was probably her gun used in her own murder

And sadly, there is a high percentage of gun owners being killed by their own weapons

[Statistical]

5. Got a cite for that?

[Taverner]

29. Y'know - in looking for a link, I couldn't find an unbiased report

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6726968&mesg_id=6726968

It seems most studies are either done by the gun control lobby, or the NRA

Except this one:

http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2009/09/gun-possession-safety/

[kctim]

9. Whats that percentage?

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

33. Yeah, I'm getting 32.3% ... repeating, of course.

LEEEROOOOOYYYY mmJENKINSSS!!!

[ieoeja]

11. See post #6.

I disagree with "probably shot by her own gun". If she was paranoid enough to carry a firearm everywhere, her hubby was probably the same. So he probably used his own.

But post #6 addresses the point.

[MilesColtrane]

16. .

deleted

[unpossibles]

13. except that it did not deter the crime. nt

[SemiCharmedQuark]

21. She probably did not believe she would be murdered by her husband at home in front of the children.

I doubt that most people think they need to protect themselves from their spouses while they are at home.

[BurtWorm]

26. Which is an example of people's fucked up thinking about handguns.

Of course they don't expect to be killed by their spouses or other family members. Their minds are on the supposed threat from strangers, but they're more than twice as likely to be killed by their own family members or by themselves as they are by strangers.

This is from Washington Post columnist Shankar Vedantam's Department of Human Behavior column. Vedantam expands on this in his book, due out in January, The Hidden Brain, which explores the ways people's unconscious biases unduly influence their decisions and thought processes:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/06/AR2008070602118.html


What the authors of the Second Amendment did not foresee, however, is that when people own a gun, they unwittingly raise their risk of getting hurt and killed -- because the odds that they will one day use their gun to commit suicide are much larger than the odds they will use their gun to defend themselves against intruders, muggers and killers.


States with high rates of gun ownership -- Alabama, Idaho, Colorado, Utah, Montana, Wyoming and New Mexico -- have suicide rates that are more than double the suicide rate in states with low rates of gun ownership, such as Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, Hawaii and New York, said Matthew Miller, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health. The difference is not because people in gun-owning states are more suicidal than people in states where fewer people own guns, but that suicide attempts in states with lots of guns produce many more completed suicides.

"The evidence is overwhelming," said David Hemenway, a professor of health policy at Harvard. "There are a dozen case-controlled studies, all of which show the gun in the home is a risk factor for suicide for the gun owner, for the spouse, for the gun owner's children."

Turning a gun on ourselves, or having a family member turn a gun on someone in the household, doesn't intuitively feel as real a risk as muggers, robbers and murderers. Given the choice between trusting our intuitions and trusting the evidence, most of us go with our gut.

If TV dramas about cops and violence were to actually depict the reality of how death and mayhem usually unfold in America, however, these are the scenarios that would stream into our homes each night: An elderly widower, lonely beyond words, shoots himself. A middle-aged executive, who has lost everything in an economic downturn, throws herself off a tall building. Two teenagers pull a Romeo-and-Juliet-style suicide as a protest against an uncaring world.

The reason we can be sure that suicide -- and not assaults, break-ins, muggings, school shootings and other fatal attacks by sinister strangers -- would account for most of the stories is that suicide dwarfs homicide as a killer in the United States. There were 32,637 suicides in the country in 2005, the latest year for which statistics are available. That year, the collective homicidal mayhem caused by domestic abusers, violent criminals, gang fights, drug wars, break-ins, shootouts with cops, accidental gun discharges and cold, premeditated murder produced 18,538 deaths.

Even the risk of terrorism doesn't begin to come close to the risk of suicide.

[unpossibles]

30. excellent post.

I am not necessarily anti-gun, but I think we need more safety and control laws - this would make me "anti-gun" by the NRA despite the fact that I own a gun but do not carry it.

Anyway, speaking of not carrying v. carrying, I have lived and worked in several very violent neighborhoods, some with active gang activity, and I still do not carry. I have on the other hand, once or twice (which is not very much considering the span of many years we're talking about) had to talk my way out of or avoid a potential situation with a stranger. I also once had to use a martial arts throw/hold to convince someone (who was not armed) to stop messing with me and it worked.

But my basic point is that I feel like carrying a gun would potentially escalate a lot faster than not carrying one. Maybe I am making a mistake, but I don't think I am. I do think it's important to always pay attention to your surroundings and to walk confidently (but not cockily) and in some ways mind your own business. Generally, people just ignore me and leave me alone. Every now and then I will get some dude saying something which I completely ignore or brush off politely.

Maybe I don't have a point, other than to laugh sometimes at the wild scenarios of many of the people I know who do carry. Maybe I am being naive; maybe I'll finally get mugged one of these days. Maybe not. Honestly, for what it's worth, I don't know that it's worth potentially killing a person over the meager amount of money in my wallet. I also think that while the second amendment is important, that NRA types tend to be a little too excited about the idea of fighting off 'tyranny' even when they sometimes welcome tyranny with open arms (ie: supporting Bush).

<rambling>

[BurtWorm]

31. Thanks.

And your "rambling" makes sense to me.

:thumbsup:

[RetroLounge]

6. If only she was also armed...

oh, wait...

:eyes:

RL

[ljm2002]

8. Live by the sword... n/t

[YOY]

23. ...die by the sword.

n/t

[Bonobo]

10. Who could have predicted a bad outcome like this??? nt

[Junkdrawer]

12. "Carrying a gun increases risk of getting shot and killed"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x258435

[ieoeja]

28. Agree. And disagree.

First, you have cause and effect: are carriers more likely to be shot, or are those more likely to be shot also more likely to carry? If I thought someone was out to kill me, I would want to carry a firearm. Carrying it would then decrease the odds of my enemy killing me, but since there is someone out to kill me, I would still be more likely to be killed than the average person.

Well over 90% of criminals are smokers. Does smoking cause crime? Of course not. But that is the logic used by this article.


That being said, I'd imagine those carrying guns are more likely to be shot if for no other reasons than:

- accidental shootings (hard to shoot yourself with a firearm you don't actually have)
- suicide (same reason)

I wouldn't bet either way on how carrying a firearm effects the chance of your being shot by a criminal. You are going to have instances where your firearm protects you and others where it provokes a deadly response.

[ddeclue]

14. Go figure..

:shrug: anyone really surprised?

[snooper2]

15. I thought this only happened in Texas?

:sarcasm:

[Burma Jones]

22. Nope, it happens in Pennsyltucky too.......

And anywhere else Men aren't coping too well with losing the power their Grandfathers had.......

[WI_DEM]

25. And remember that gun toting fool standing in front of a church in NH when Obama went there?

[Rebubula]

17. Minor Good note....

...the asshole did not take his kids out with him. They still have a lot of trauma to deal with and life will be anything but pleasant for awhile - but they are alive.

So tired of parents killing the kids when they kill themselves.

[xchrom]

19. oh -- now that's a shock.

:eyes:

[Burma Jones]

20. Let's see, Husband was a Parole Officer, before that a Prison Guard

Wife seemed to be a little extra vehement about her gun.

Husband shoots Wife then self.

That seems to be a lot of violence surrounding their lives. You know, spending all your working day around criminals and then coming home to a wife that either feels threatened at a kids' soccer game or has some sort of need to instill fear in Soccer Moms. The Judge that took her Permit away said he based his decision on a state law that prohibits certain gun permits from being given to anyone whose character and reputation make him or her a danger to public safety.

It's a good thing the kids lived through it. I hope they'll get the intense care they'll need to cope with this madness.

[WI_DEM]

24. Live by the gun and die by the gun. I feel sad for those children.

[divideandconquer]

27. Statistics can never show how many victims of the gun culture are out there

I've always seen most gun nuts were already victims, tormented by fear and mental problems.

[Stinky The Clown]

32. "Guns"

:slow head shake:

[juno jones]

34. And somewheres a neighborhood is heaving a sigh of relief.

Face it, do you want aggreessively armed assholes living next to you and carrying to kids soccer games? Thank gods they didn't kill the kids or take out any police or neighbors in a standoff.