I’ll start off by, once again, saying I don’t like guns; at
all. That said, if you want to have a gun, or, for some ungodly reason, guns, in your house, go right ahead. All
I ask is that you use them responsibly, and I know most gun owners do that. But it’s the few that aren’t responsible, the
ones that leave guns around children or use guns for something other than
shooting; those folks are spoiling it for all y’all.
Out in Oregon, Jon Andrew Meyer Jr. was visiting a friend’s
apartment. After sitting on the couch for a while, he decided to get up, and
use the assault rifle he’d brought with him as a kind of crutch. The gun went
off, spraying bullets through the ceiling of Karen Hancock’s apartment,
wounding her, and killing 5-year-old Alysa Bobbitt.
Meyer told investigators the gun went off accidentally; a
gun used as a crutch. His lawyer says Meyers had been assured the gun was not
fully automatic so it was perfectly acceptable to use to help him to his feet.
Meyer is being held on $250,000 bail on charges of manslaughter, assault and
unlawful possession of a machine gun.
A machine gun crutch.
The little girl and her mother were visiting friends in the apartment,
but it is unclear what Meyer was doing there and why he felt the need to bring
an assault rifle with him. Court records indicate that his fiancée had kicked
him out of her place, and had gotten a restraining order. Meyer listed his
current residence as his sister's home.
After the shooting Meyer’s fiancée,
Victoria Kohout, told authorities that he was a "big teddy bear," although
her petition for the restraining order called him an "unpredictable drug
addict" who had threatened her with a gun, and threatened to burn down her
house, slash her tires and break the windows on her car; it was noted that Meyer
had four guns.
This is the gun problem in
this country; that we allow people to own guns who don’t know how to use them,
or use them for a purpose for which they aren’t intended: a crutch. This is the problem we have with guns in this country; that anyone
can own a gun, use it in a reckless way and shoot two innocent people, killing
one of them.
Yeah, I think he waaaay than met the standard to remove them from his person.
ReplyDeleteIndeed this is a problem in this country, a big problem that, unfortunately, is unlikely to change as long as we have a sub culture of some gun owners who feel the need to compensate for their various weaknesses by owning a gun, especially an assault rifle.
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ReplyDeleteThe gun problem in this country is not that we allow people to own guns that do not know how to use them for their intended purpose... There are laws in place to try and monitor/control who is allowed to purchase a gun of any kind. The problem is the "underground weapons trade" that is appealing to more and more people that have previously been denied access to a gun through the proper channels or can not afford to purchase a gun from a store plus licensing fees.... I live in the same town as Meyers, and I can pretty much gaurentee that any of the guns he owned were all aquired most likely from a drug trade not through any legalized method. Because around here in the middle of butt-crack nowhere oregon gun control is the least of our problems... Drugs and police corruption run rampent round here... The sadest part of the Meyers case is his charges and bail amount... There is no way he should have gotten away with manslaughter, it should have been at least murder 2, and he shouldn't have had a bail period. But he definitely should have gotten an actual murder charge just because Alysa was an unintentional victim does not mean the bullets in that gun were not meant for someone else... He had intent apparently to use that weapon that night because why else would you show up to your friends house with a "semi-automatic" and none of your other belongings... Sorry about the rant but it seems to me of the whole article you focused solely on a gun control issue rather than any of the other factors the article points out... And I'm not a fan of guns at all from a hand gun to a machine gun and don't condone anyone really possessing a gun because "accidents happen" and there are also plenty of cold blooded murderers in the world trying/achieving the effect that what happened was just an accident.
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