Man shoots himself after killing wife, son

[wtmusic]

Three people are dead after a double murder-suicide Saturday morning in which an elderly man shot and killed his wife and adult son before turning the gun on himself at the breakfast table of their Monte Vista home, authorities said.

Police Chief William McManus said that the man, who was in his late 70s to early 80s, called police dispatch at around 9:15 a.m. to report the shootings.

“He told the dispatcher, ‘There's been two homicides and there's about to be a suicide,'” McManus said.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/Three_dead_in_apparent_double_murder-suicide.html

[eqfan592]

1. Terrible story.

Did you have a greater purpose for sharing this with us? Some implication that somehow this wouldn't have happened without the existence of firearms? If so, would you care to share evidence to back up such a claim or assertion?

If this was not your intention, then disregard my questions.

[MrModerate]

3. I'm sure if he'd had a butcher knife, a large rock, a coil of rope and a vial of cyanide . . .

Instead, the outcome would have been pretty much the same. The presence or absence of a firearm in a firearm crime is utterly irrelevant.

[wtmusic]

4. Except that a gun makes it a lot easier, doesn't it.

Come now.

Cops don't carry butcher knives.

We don't send troops into battle with vials of cyanide.

We don't hunt with coils of rope (unless we're in the mood to be very, very sporting).

Why do you think that is?

[MrModerate]

5. Possibly because when your objective is killing at the retail level . . .

It's hard to beat a handgun.

[wtmusic]

6. Bingo.

And not just the "retail" level, either. I'd bet a very high percentage of those who want to finish off their wives and sons and be SURE about it choose handguns.

[eqfan592]

9. See post #8. (nt)

[eqfan592]

8. Cops aren't typically dealing with family members every day, either.

A firearm is mainly useful for doing it's duty while also keeping your distance, both in an offensive and defensive situation. When a husband is dealing with his own family, this is not necessary. He is more than capable of getting to and keeping within knife/bat/other close range potentially deadly object distance of his family members.

Guns are often still used in these cases because people do have them on hand in this nation. But that doesn't mean the gun is the REASON why the person committed the act. Acts such as these are VERY common in Japan, for example, yet private firearm ownership is very rare.

You're making the very common mistake of placing the blame for the incident on the implement that was utilized, and are ignoring the much deeper issues at hand.

[MrModerate]

10. My whole point about handguns is that because of their technical superiority . . .

over other forms of killing, they make it easy for a family dispute that might have ended with someone getting roughed up and someone else taken away by the police to cool off, instead turning into a multiple homicide. A firearm can be used to kill a roomful of people in a few seconds. The same is simply not true of other means of inflicting harm that are widely available to the general public.

In the same quarter of a second it takes to make a fist, or the half a second to pick up a knife, a gun allows you to fire off several highly lethal rounds. There's really no comparison.

It the gun the reason for the murder? Of course not. But would there have even been a murder if the gun wasn't present? Probably not.

[Euromutt]

12. The most persistent myth about domestic homicides is that they occur in the heat of argument

Though leaving is the best response to violence, it is in trying to leave that most women get killed. This dispels a dangerous myth about spousal killings: that they happen in the heat of argument. In fact, the majority of husbands who kill their wives stalk them first, and far from a "crime of passion" that it's so often called, killing a wife is usually a decision, not a loss of control. Those men who are the most violent are not all carried away by fury. In fact, their heart rates actually drop and they become physiologically calmer as they become more violent.

Even the phrase "crime of passion" has contributed to our widespread misunderstanding of this violence. That phrase is not the description of a crime--it is the description of an excuse, a defense. Since 75 percent of spousal murders happen after the woman leaves, it is estrangement, not argument, that begets the worst violence.

Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear, chapter 10 "Intimate Enemies."

[MrModerate]

14. Where shall I start?

1) The crime listed by the OP certainly seems to fall into the "crime of passion" category as it is commonly understood (which has little to do with its legal standing).

2) It doesn't matter anyway, since my point is that a gun is so vastly superior to other methods of killing that it cannot reasonably be compared to bludgeoning, stabbing, suffocation, etc., etc.

3) We're talking murder-suicide. I'd posit that very few murder-suicides are *not* crimes of passion, AIICU.

[Euromutt]

16. You could start by letting go of the "crime of passion" myth

The article is just another in a near-endless series featuring clichés that almost invariably accompany this kind of story: “they were quiet, nice folks”; “they kept to themselves”; “he was a really friendly guy.” It's what everybody always says, and almost always, on closer inspection it turns out to be bullshit, just another chorus of the song "Things Like That Don't Happen In This Neighborhood" (as de Becker puts it).

Seriously, I cannot recommend The Gift of Fear enough. Here's another excerpt:

A television news show reports on a man who shot and killed his wife at work. A restraining order had been served on him the same day as his divorce papers, coincidentally also his birthday. The story tells of the man's threats, of his being fired from his job, of his putting a gun to his wife's head the week before the killing, of his stalking her. Even with all these facts, the reported ends with: "Officials concede that no one could have predicted this would happen."

This is an extreme example in that the initial story lists all the factors from which one might readily conclude that the murder could quite readily have been predicted (and still concluded that it couldn't have been predicted), but it illustrates how the news media, and those who consume the news media, are locked into a pattern of denial. We want to believe that violence--especially lethal violence--isn't predictable, because otherwise, we might have to accept some measure of responsibility (even if it's just to our own consciences) for failing to intervene to stop an act of violence that we could see coming.

2) It doesn't matter anyway, since my point is that a gun is so vastly superior to other methods of killing that it cannot reasonably be compared to bludgeoning, stabbing, suffocation, etc., etc.

Why shouldn't it matter? If domestic homicides are, in fact, overwhelmingly premeditated affairs, then it follows that the prospective perpetrator will tailor his plans to the means he has available. While firearms are certainly the most popular and efficient means of committing murder(-suicide), it is unrealistic to believe that someone who has made the decision to kill will allow himself to be stopped because that one method is unavailable. O.J. Simpson managed without a gun, didn't he? As have plenty of other spousal killers.

3) We're talking murder-suicide. I'd posit that very few murder-suicides are *not* crimes of passion, AIICU.

A very large number of domestic killings are murder-suicides. In a very real sense, just about every homicide that is not committed in a context of organized criminal activity is an "honor killing," in that the perpetrator seeks to protect or boost his (usually his, sometimes her) self-image. "Disgruntled" employees shoot up the workplace because the job from which they have been or are about to be fired is an inextricable part of their conception of their personal identity; husbands murder their estranged wives because their self-image won't tolerate the idea of being someone whose wife walked out on him, and/or he'd rather kill the children than let her take them from him; and in some cultures, the males of an extended family will murder a female to erase the "dishonor" she has brought upon the family. It's all the same basic idea. But given that in this society, murdering people will generally result in arrest, prosecution and incarceration, it makes sense that anyone who kills to protect his self-image will be strongly inclined to banjo himself while his self-image is still intact, rather than allow the criminal justice and correctional systems to destroy his self-image.

In short, domestic murder-suicides are no different from domestic homicides. In the event that the perp whacks himself afterward, he's doing it for the same reason he committed the murders in the first place.

[shadowrider]

15. I'll go one step further

And say (at least in my case), when the guy tries to get away from the situation in order to difuse it, the woman just gets more violent because she WANTS to continue. At that point it turns into self-defense. I got out to prevent one of us from getting physically hurt to one degree or another. As it is now, we make much better friends than mates.

[eqfan592]

19. For the point you're making to have any validity...

...you have to prove that somebody who was not otherwise willing to take lethal measures in the first place (for instance, just balling up their fists ), WOULD take lethal measures simply because a gun is around, and would NOT make use of other lethal measures, such as knives or bludgeoning objects, if the gun weren't around. You have to prove that the primary reason people take lethal measures in these instances (or even that it's a significant factor at all) is the inherent ease of use of a firearm. That firearms turn those who would not kill into those who would, just by their very presence.

Good luck with that.

[Euromutt]

11. The Japanese seems to manage fine without

The Japanese language distinguishes between ikka-shinju (an incident in which an entire family collectively commits suicide) and muri-shinju (in which one parents kills the children, possibly the other spouse, and then him/herself; or, more rarely, both parents kill the children and then themselves).

In the Japanese local and national press you can usually find at least one or two cases of "muri-shinju" reported every single day.

http://www.glocom.org/special_topics/social_trends/20040107_trends_s65/index.html

One or two familicides every single day, despite having probably the most stringent laws on private firearms ownership of any democracy.

[MrModerate]

13. The article defines muri-shinju as one family member . . .

(usually a parent) killing another family member (usually a child). The much "rarer" (the article's term) ikka-shinju is mutual familicide. Which is not reported once or twice a day.

So, in a country of 128 million (a bit more than 1/3 the size of the US) they report 1-2 murder-suicides of family members each day for the whole country. Sounds pretty good to me, especially when gun suicide in Japan is 1/50 (not a typo) of that in the US.

I'm not saying that the Japanese model of gun control is at all applicable to the US (the two countries have vastly different attitudes toward personal freedom and responsibility). But please don't use cracked statistics to suggest that strict and successful gun prohibition doesn't have the desired effect of significantly limiting gun crime.

[Euromutt]

18. You need to work on your reading comprehension

"Muri-shinju" is when a family member, usually a mother or father, murders their child, children or other family member and then commits suicide.

Note: "children". Plural.
Note also: "their child." Singular, because they only have the one. The number of murdered children is no more than one because there are no other children to kill.

From reports in the media, it seems that financial worries are the major motive behind many of these murder-suicides. Desperate parents in a suicidal state seem to reason that it is somehow better that their children die with them than face what they believe would be the hardships of Japan's undeveloped welfare system.

If so, it doesn't make sense that parent would kill only one of multiple children; he or she would kill all the children, and the only reason one child was murdered is because there was only one child to kill.

I might add that where there is an "other family member" to kill, I'd guess that if it's not the spouse, it's the husband's mother. Japanese mothers-in-law are known for monitoring their sons' households to make sure his wife is treating him to his mother's standards.

So, in a country of 128 million (a bit more than 1/3 the size of the US) they report 1-2 murder-suicides of family members each day for the whole country. Sounds pretty good to me, especially when gun suicide in Japan is 1/50 (not a typo) of that in the US.

I don't see how this supports your argument.
Does the US manage more one or more murder-suicides a day, even with a population almost triple that of Japan? Given that damn near every domestic murder/murder-suicide that occurs with a firearm seems to get posted on this forum, I'll be bloody surprised.

And while the Japanese firearm suicide rate may be 1/50th of the US's, the Japanese overall suicide rate is about double that of the US, which only supports my argument, to wit that availability of firearms is not a driving factor in the occurrence of domestic murders, suicides and murder-suicides. Where the desire to kill (be it oneself, others or both) exists, the killing will be carried out with whatever means are available.

[proteus_lives]

2. Ban human depression and misery

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

7. What is your point in posting these stories?

[Pavulon]

17. Jack shit to do with me. Jack shit to do with legal ownership

you guys post this shit like criminal behavior is a reflection of legal ownership. People die, that is sad, they die everyday. Bottom line there is nothing any gun law is going to do in the US other than destroy the party that passes it.

People have been killing others long before the gun existed.

Dont waste you time, 1990's are gone, this topic is done.

[SteveM]

20. Yeah, but they just love that culture war; it's like an addiction. nt