Late one afternoon in January, Peter Hartzel stood in the basement firing range of the PSMG Gun Shop with a 9-millimeter Beretta in hand and a consuming darkness welling within.
Hartzel, a 29-year-old newspaper reporter with a history of mental illness, had nearly completed a three-day firearm safety course, required for a state license to carry or possess a gun. In his final hour of training, he was consistently hitting his target. Then he lifted the gun to his right temple and pulled the trigger, killing himself...
More fundamentally, the suicides highlight what some say is a flawed sequence in the process of obtaining a firearm license in Massachusetts.
Right. Create more hoops for We the People to jump through because an "authorized journalist" misused a gun. Yet somehow, in the entire Boston Globe article, they couldn't even give fleeting mention to one segment of the populace much more likely to commit suicide...
I couldn't really care less either way ... but ya'd think folks liberal 'nuff to think abortion is fine, wouldn't have much of a problem with suicide?
ReplyDeleteOops ... there I go usin' logic again. :-/
So this guy shoots himself as opposed to what? Jumping in front of a bus, or hanging himself... Well boo freakin hoo.
ReplyDeleteAnd his mother laments:
"...[mother] constantly worried for their son but never saw overt indications that he was contemplating suicide."
As Archie said:
"Would it make you feel any better little girl if they was pushed outta windows?"
http://www.jahozafat.com/php/sounds/?id=bst&media=WAVS&type=TV_Shows&movie=All_In_The_Family"e=abgun.txt&file=abgun.wav
the only thing I think of when I read the title is the next election and the state of our political system.
ReplyDeleteMaybe mASS should legalize euthanasia , if only so we don't have to hear sob stories like these.