Christ on a crutch we are a deeply stupid nation:
Nearly a week ago, on June 24 , his 45th birthday, Jason Sheats gathered with his family in the living room of their Houston-suburb home about 5 p.m. Beside him were his daughters, Taylor, 22, and Madison, 17. His wife, Christy, had called a family meeting.
After years of challenges with Christy’s mental health, her struggles with depression and anxiety, her suicide attempts, Jason told authorities that he thought perhaps she was going to announce she had decided to file for divorce. The couple had talked about separating.
But instead, police said, the 42-year-old mother pulled out a .38 caliber handgun, a gift from her late grandfather, and pointed it at her screaming children. Then she shot them, inside the house and out in the street, where the girls collapsed and stopped moving. When law enforcement arrived, they watched Christy fire a final bullet into her eldest daughter, then a police officer shot the mother dead.
***Jason Sheats told investigators that his wife struggled with depression and anxiety and after each suicide attempt had been treated and evaluated at different private mental health facilities. After she stayed several days, Jason told authorities, he would pick Christy up and take her home. At the time of the shooting, Jason said, his wife was taking “numerous” prescription medications. She was also seeing a therapist.
Despite information on her LinkedIn profile listing her as the business manager of a Houston tattoo removal clinic, Jason told police his wife did not have a job, according to NBC News. They’d been married for more than 20 years, Jason told authorities, but Christy had been drinking heavily and they’d separated several times.
The gun she used to kill her children was inherited from her grandfather, authorities said. Christy had applied for a concealed carry permit, Jason told investigators, but the state of Texas rejected her application. Nehls said at the news conference that his office is investigating why the license was not approved. It was unclear whether it had to do with Christy’s mental health history.
MAYBE GET THE FUCKING ARSENAL OUT OF THE FUCKING HOUSE? I feel terrible for the man, but how many fucking warning signs do you need? I’m sorry, but don’t tell me “You weren’t there” and “you shouldn’t judge” and the other horseshit. If he had used an iota of common sense his kids and wife might still be alive. He should feel guilty the rest of his life.
redshirt
Cool! A fun feel good thread for the holiday weekend!
SteveA
“MAYBE GET THE FUCKING ARSENAL OUT OF THE FUCKING HOUSE? I feel terrible for the man, but how many fucking warning signs do you need? I’m sorry, but don’t tell me “You weren’t there” and “you shouldn’t judge” and the other horseshit. If he had used an iota of common sense his kids and wife might still be alive. He should feel guilty the rest of his life.”
Yup.
aimai
It is a horrible, horrible, story. I looked at the pictures of those girls and just cried.
trollhattan
Yup. The “tool” so many presume is there to protect them from whatever danger they conjure in their minds is more typically a lurking disaster available when an impulse takes form. Again, children protected until the moment of birth then relegated to speedbumps on Freedom Road.
ShadeTail
Don’t bother pointing out to the gun nuts how the vast majority of gun deaths are accidents or suicides. They’ll rationalize that away or ignore it entirely.
Served
One of my friends had a very scary suicidal episode a few years back after a bad breakup. Once we got him admitted to a hospital, the first thing we did was get his handgun and ammo out of the apartment and didn’t tell him which of us had it.
And I should add, for a bunch of scared 25 year olds, we didn’t even have to think about it. It was instinctual.
Kazanir
I’m sure he will feel guilty for the rest of his life, no matter what any number of assholes on the Internet have to say about it one way or the other.
Immanentize
I’m visiting my in-laws who live in Ft. Bend County. This shooting happened in a development about five miles from them. Everyone agrees that the first thing that should have happened was get the damn guns locked up in another state. So sad
fuckwit
That’s a man-bites-dog story– usually it’s the men (with small-pen15 issues) that go apeshit and start shooting people; this time it was a woman.
The husband is stupid for sure, but also something of a saint for putting up with the murderer’s serious mental health issues and staying with her for that long.
Just tragic. Moloch claims 3 more sacrifices.
Emma
I’ve noticed a common thread among the people who are close family of someone with mental illness. They all hope against hope that “it will get better” and dread taking action on things in case “it makes it worse.” Then they all spend a lifetime wallowing in guilt. Obviously, not everyone is like that, but it’s common enough.
Hammering on that poor guy isn’t going to help him. He’s got a lifetime ahead to regret it.
Villago Delenda Est
Um, er, well regulated militia, etc.
MD Rackham
@Kazanir: Just 7 comments in and we’ve already had the “He’s suffered enough” excuse trotted out.
Seems slightly ahead of schedule to me.
Mnemosyne
@fuckwit:
Frankly, it was your typical domestic abuser story — estranged spouse kills the kids and themselves to punish the surviving spouse. The only slightly unusual thing is that the abusive spouse in this scenario was the wife, not the husband, but frankly that’s because an abusive mother is more likely to stab or drown the kids than shoot them.
And, yes, if you have a spouse or other loved one with severe mental health issues, letting them have easy access to deadly weapons is perhaps not the best idea.
We’re coming up on the 16th anniversary of the night G’s (depressed, alcoholic) best friend shot himself in the head. G still feels guilty about the missed call from his friend that night that happened because he was on a date with me.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Houses with guns in them are the most likely to have gun fatalities – that’s obvious. Almost half of the firearm deaths in the US are suicides.
(citations omitted) Link
Keeping a gun out of reach of someone with a history of multiple suicide attempts was the only rational play here. It wasn’t what happened, and there are multiple fatalities. This shouldn’t be that difficult, and these deaths were entirely preventable. It’s immaterial how much this man lost, or how he’s suffering – these deaths could have been prevented.
See also here: a summary of some data.
Emma
@MD Rackham: Nobody says “he’s suffered enough.” We’ve pointed out he’ll suffer for the rest of his life no matter what our opinions are. Unless he’s a psychopath.
Mnemosyne
@Emma:
I think people are sarcastically referencing the “he/she/they suffered enough” platitude because it’s used as a way to avoid looking at the fact that this happens all the time and there are public policy and public health steps we could be taking to avoid future tragedies that we refuse to take because we as a society pretend that acts like this are impossible to predict and feign shock every time it happens again.
If, as I suspect, this was also an abusive relationship, there’s pretty much no possible way for this poor man to feel any worse.
Keith P.
This was actually way bigger news than the guy who unloaded 200 rounds with a semi-auto, killed 3 people, and injured about 6 cops (along with setting a gas station on fire) right in the heart of Houston. The Katy killing was horrific as well, but I still don’t get why the PTSD (or whatever the guy’s issue was) killing didn’t register much of a blip.
geg6
Yeah, husband did all he could to help his mentally ill wife.
Except taking the most important step anyone should take when dealing with a family member with mental illness: getting any and all guns out of the damn house.
Terrible story. And so very preventable.
Villago Delenda Est
It does not help matters one little bit that this woman was a raging ammosexual.
Ammosexuality needs to be somehow put in the DSM.
Technocrat
Did she shoot him too? The article mentions the mom walking outside and reloading to shoot the second girl, but doesn’t mention the father’s condition. For the sake of his future mental health, I hope he didn’t freeze. THAT would be the recurring nightmare, not having a gun in the house.
Villago Delenda Est
@Keith P.: Dog bites Man. No Film at 11.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@fuckwit: Are only some health issues worth putting up with, then? Cancer, heart disease, kidney disease or strokes don’t require sainthood, but purely neurobiological issues do? What if the behavior is secondary to brain cancer, traumatic brain injury, a stroke, or multiple sclerosis? Are those spouses who put up with it saints/not saints? Asking for a friend.
Prescott Cactus
Gun lock thru the barrel may have helped. The wife would have have flipped out if hid or destroyed the gun (she did anyway, so . . .).
Putting a bullet in her dead or dying daughter in front of a cop pretty much ruined the copper’s day and psyche. Suicide by policeman.
TX, when it refused the concealed carry, if for reason of mental instability or prior felony should have pulled her gun ASAP.
gogol's wife
@Kazanir:
Well, that’s just great. Tell it to the dead women.
Villago Delenda Est
OK, call in Allain. Not only does BJ change formatting when I refresh, it just ate a comment reporting same.
Prescott Cactus
@Technocrat:
No her intent was to make her husband suffer. He remained lead free.
daves09
The woman was not just a nut but a gun nut, who threatened harm to anyone who tried to take her guns-check the internet.
She planned this to punish her husband by killing the two people he loved most in this world. Taking her gun away would not have stopped her from getting another one. In fact taking it would undoubtedly have driven her rage even higher.
Given her level of lunatic rage it’s probably questionable whether anything could have averted some kind of tragedy.
The only thing that might have helped was institutional care. From everything I’ve read-which is a lot-the husband was basically a victim of trying to be a good guy. Anyone who says that he deserves the lifelong agony of losing his daughters is just an asshole-yeah, I’m talking to people on this thread.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@geg6:
Exactly. This is not hard stuff.
@Mnemosyne: G (more than likely) could not have saved his friend, and I hope he can feel that someday. It’s entirely possible – and at least as likely – that he was just calling to say goodbye. Not every suicide can be prevented. Not by family, not by friends, not be medical professionals. Many can, to be sure, but not all. No more than all people can survive stage III or IV cancer, regardless of the quality of care.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Did he know where the gun was? Did he try taking it and/or the ammo away before? Was he afraid of taking it away lest he wake up one night to find she found some other creative way of killing him? Or she’d find a way of obtaining another gun? How about all the standard psychological issues involved in enabling obviously unhealthy behavior? “Oh she’ll get better,” “We’ll work it out,” “Nothing bad will happen.”
Yeah, the gun was the tragedy, but we don’t know the solution was that fucking easy.
jl
From the story:
” Christy had applied for a concealed carry permit, Jason told investigators, but the state of Texas rejected her application. Nehls said at the news conference that his office is investigating why the license was not approved. ”
They are investigating why the concealed carry permit was NOT approved? I hope they are doing that investigations for the right reasons.
Keith G
@Prescott Cactus: She hit her goal.
Earl
All I can think of when I read this is at least an ammosexual shot his/her own, instead of my own. For once.
Prescott Cactus
@efgoldman:
Unfortunately, they don’t bother much with either. DCFS is so backlogged and underfunded that we barely have time to police our restrooms and get Jesus back into our schoolrooms let alone worry about guns and kids.
Helen
OT: Elie Wiesel has died. I’d you haven’t read “Night” you must.
JPL
The police have been to the house fourteen times, although some for alarm issues. Wouldn’t it have occurred to them to issue a citation, domestic violence or something, that would have caused the guns to be removed.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@daves09: I’m not suggesting he deserves the sorrow of his daughters’ deaths, or having witnessed them. I can’t even imagine how he feels or will feel. But that doesn’t require that I don’t point out some preventive measures that weren’t taken. If that makes me an asshole, I can live with that.
JPL
@Helen: How sad. RIP
OGLiberal
Apparently, on social media she frequently posted that Obama was coming to take her guns so who can blame her for just showing our dictator in chief that she’d be more than willing to defend her second amendment rights.
MattF
@fuckwit: Garry Wills: Our Moloch.
cokane
Yeah Cole, he watched his children shot to death in front of him, I’m sure he feels pretty fucking guilty. Not that I disagree with your point, but man, the nastiness… the desire to punish the already suffering
daves09
There is a lot of sexism going on in this thread. That the man-being a man-should somehow have been able to control his crazy wife. How on earth could he be expected to know that she had tipped so far over that she was willing to kill her children in order to punish him? The idea that taking that gun would have prevented her from getting another is crazy.
The wife was possessed by homicidal rage, she planned this for his birthday so that he will be horribly reminded every year.
gogol's wife
Let’s all discuss anything but THE INSANITY THAT GUNS ARE CHOKING US TO DEATH.
cokane
Also htf does the husband force his wife to not have a gun? She’s an adult and guns are easy to get. It’s so easy to talk shit about what shoulda been done
daves09
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Your mistake is thinking that in dealing with a viciously disturbed person any preventive measures would have prevented. They wouldn’t have. She was determined to punish her husband because in her twisted mind he deserved it and nothing would have stopped her.
aimai
@fuckwit: My cousin was married to a woman who had suicidal impulses–she was horribly cruel to him, as well as dangerous for the children. But he stayed married to her to protect the children. He was afraid that she, and her family who were extremely wealthy, would end up with custody of the children and then he wouldn’t be there to protect them from their mother. So he stayed married to her until after the children were out of the house.
Its often extremely difficult to deal with someone who has a severe mental illness combined (as it sometimes is) with an inability to recognize their own illness, rage, and other personality issues. This woman was not just depressed and suicidal, she sounds like she had other intractible personality disorders. The “annihilating” family killer is a frequent type of killer because the desire to strike out at the people closest to you is so common. This woman’s rage and fear of loss was triggered by her oldest daughter being about to get married. She was a ticking time bomb and we might actually grasp that she was a danger to those children for many years and her rage and fear only became uncontrollable just as her oldest daughter was escaping her grasp.
gogol's wife
Yeah, there’s just nothing, nothing that can be done.
Except repeal the Second Amendment and confiscate the guns. That would help.
Technocrat
@Prescott Cactus:
Wow. Then I’m going to have to go with “evil” as opposed to “mentally ill”. There are hardened gangsters who wouldn’t kill your kids in front of you. Jesus.
ETA: This is one of those rare cases where I think focusing on the gun is missing the point. Someone hates you enough to slay your daughters (and THEIR CHILDREN) in front of you, any implement will do.
HRA
There came a time when I realized I had to make my home safer from my then abusive husband for my self and most of all for the children. A BIL came and asked me for use of the hunting rifle and I asked him to keep it. He knew what I meant and I never saw it again. The crossbow in the basement was wrapped and put out with the garbage on pickup day. The 2 Samurai swords he had got as a gift were a problem for they were hung on a wall in plain sight. Even though he rarely came home or stayed it was a chance I had to take. I gave them away to someone who had once admired them.
I wrote this to urge anyone in a like relationship to take an inventory of your home and make it safe.
muddy
I used to have a gun nut roommate, he was always after me to have a handgun at the bedside. I said NO because my son was 7, and besides it’s unnecessary. Although I’ve used guns plenty, I don’t need one in the bedroom, FFS. One night 2 of our other friends came up visiting late at night, drunk, and thought it would be funny to go up in my room to scare me as I slept. When I heard them in the hall, I thought it was regular intruders, and in that moment I wished with all my heart I had the bedside gun, because I would have shot the second they opened the door. The way they were standing, I’d have hit them both easily. Truly, I know if I had the gun that minute, I’d have shot.
As it was I just turned the light on suddenly and hollered. These stupid fucking idiots then said that the lesson to be learned was that I should have had the gun! I said, No you’d be dead for no good reason, for a prank, that’s the lesson to be learned. That was 26 years ago, these 2 guys still think I should have learned the opposite lesson (in annoyed moments I kind of wish I’d shot them “just a little” to see if they still felt the same, haha).
Rather than get a gun at the bedside, I got better friends who don’t want to terrorize sleeping women. Problem solved.
? Martin
@cokane:
You realize that you’ve put the suffering of the father ahead of the lives of the two daughters. This is a constant problem in this country – a deep cultural notion that the dead no longer need to be considered – they’re off in heaven or some other place, no worse (and possibly better) than the world they were in before, that we only need to give consideration to those stuck here on Earth.
If instead we put our primary focus on those that were killed, and secondarily on those around them (we can certainly still be sympathetic to the father, but was there an opportunity to minimize the chance these deaths? Yeah, several) then we might actually get somewhere in terms of policy, in terms of cultural attitudes toward violence, and so on.
Let’s stop deflecting attention from the primary issue to a secondary one, as we’re just doing the work of the NRA for them.
Earl
@cokane: Except these ammosexuals actively enable other people to be similarly hurt. So no sympathy when they score an own goal.
gogol's wife
@HRA:
You sound very smart and brave.
? Martin
@muddy: Next time they bring it up, without warning, punch them square in the face and ask them what lesson they think they should learn from that. If they bring it up again, do it again.
wjs
If you took the guns away from the homes of anyone who demonstrated that they were mentally ill, and replaced it with medical marijuana, this would still be a pretty fucked up country.
But less so.
cokane
@? Martin: No I havent
? Martin
@Technocrat:
Then why wasn’t some other implement used?
Clue: because it probably would have failed, at least to some degree. Guns are a first-strike weapon. There is no defense to them when used intentionally. Almost everything else provides a defender some chance to survive.
cokane
@Earl: assume much? You dont know his view of guns
daves09
@Earl: You have no idea whether the husband was a gun nut or not. No coverage has said anything about it so I’m assuming not.
But by all means, let’s put all the responsibility and guilt on the husband.
A woman who walks out of the house to put a killing shot in her daughter in front of the police is not someone who was going to be deterred by taking her guns away.
gogol's wife
@? Martin:
It’s the same issue with suicide. Attempts succeed much more often with guns. And no, it’s not true that everyone who attempts suicide eventually succeeds. But then the people who are trying to do studies of these issues are not allowed to do so by Federal law. So we can’t really know as much as we should. We can’t even study it.
gogol's wife
Everyone should read comment #50. Where there’s a will there’s a way.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@daves09: I never met the woman so I couldn’t say. I’m not sure anyone, including her treatment providers, can know what she was determined to do. It certainly seems from this vantage point that she suffered from an un/unsuccessfully treated personality disorder,along with any co-morbid psych conditions that are more susceptible to treatment.
And I would maintain that any spouse of any gender separate someone with a history of suicidality for firearms. And people with florid personality disorders are not safe around weapons – certain others are not safe around them in the presence of weapons.
None of us can know what was actually preventable. But those deaths with that gun were preventable to the extent that her husband knew she had access to it. Call me whatever you want, I remain firm in that opinion.
geg6
@HRA:
Exactly. The excuse-making in this thread just goes to show that ammosexuality is a damn plague upon this country, infecting even those who would be shocked and dismayed to be called such. And also how few have ever faced situations where guns, mental illness and abuse are concerned. He couldn’t stop her from getting a gun? He should have taken every one she bought every time she bought one out of the house. How would she have paid for said guns if she wasn’t working? He could cut off her credit cards and changed the bank account. He was afraid of her? He should have left, taking the kids with him. All people in these situations have choices to make and any one of them could be dangerous. So the idea is to choose the one most likely to have the better outcome. Doing nothing about the weapon sure didn’t make for a safe situation.
dogwood
@OGLiberal:
She was a gun nut on social media. Ranting that Obama would take away her ability to protect her family. The problems with gun violence get exacerbated because people like this woman get so much positive reinforcement for their delusions on Facebook and Twitter.
Mnemosyne
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
He read “Night Falls Fast” by Kay Redfield Jamison afterwards, and that helped a lot (as you probably know, she is a therapist who also has bipolar disorder and has survived a couple of suicide attempts). It’s still a sore spot, though, and always will be.
And, needless to say, between that and my own bouts with (fortunately non-suicidal) depression, we have no guns in the house and don’t want any.
Technocrat
@? Martin:
I tend to agree – most of the time. But in this case, it could have been rat poison in a cake, or a driving the family car off a bridge, or stabbing them in their sleep. It’s different than a kid who otherwise couldn’t hurt himself (sans gun), or a killer who’s body count would be limited (sans gun). Removing the gun doesn’t remove the spouse who hates you that completely.
Note the very wise post #50. She removed the Samurai swords, because lack of a gun isn’t tantamount to safety in some situations.
Mnemosyne
@? Martin:
The one issue I have with pinning blame on the father is that this has all the hallmarks of an abusive relationship, with the father as the victim of years of spousal abuse. If the genders were reversed, would we say that the abused wife was responsible for making sure her abusive husband didn’t have access to guns?
Frankly, what was needed was more government resources that he could turn to that would take the guns away from her, but we can’t talk about that because the 2nd Amendment is more important than domestic abuse victims.
Betty Cracker
That’s a quote from the killer’s Facebook page.
daves09
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Jesus, look at the facts. She was determined to punish her husband. She was determined to kill her daughters to do so. After shooting them, she reloaded, walked outside and finished the job. How much more evidence of determination do you want?
Take away her gun, she stops at the gun shop, pulls out her credit card and buys another one.
This was not a random, spur of the moment, crime of passion sort of thing. She did not suddenly blow up, run in the bedroom, and get her gun. It was done in cold, albeit crazy, blood.
aimai
@Technocrat: I agree with this. I am as anti gun as the next person–and I think if she had not had the gun handy she would perhaps not have been able to carry out her plan because guns clearly had a special cachet for her–but this woman was abusive (as Mnemosyne says upthread) and filled with hate and rage. In the absence of a gun she could easily have chosen to smother or poison her daughters. History is filled with parents who kill their children as a way of getting back at the spouse. There was a horrific case here in the North East a few years ago where a man kidnapped his minor children and murdered them en route to somewhere else, hiding the bodies to prolong his wife’s agony. This is incredibly common.
muddy
@? Martin: Mostly I just laugh in their faces, it’s just ridiculous. Their grown kids (who would not be there had I killed the guys that night) think their dads are idiots. That’s punishment enough, I’d be really sad if my grown son thought I was laughably stupid.
I wouldn’t keep up the association at all except that the young people are great.
debbie
@aimai:
Definitely a mistake to see them. I don’t understand how even a damaged mother could murder her children.
aimai
@wjs: But everyone would be having a wonderful time.
Technocrat
@Mnemosyne:
Absolutely this. Someone up-thread opined that if he feared for his safety, he should have left. That’s classic abuse victim-blaming. Frankly, the fact that she walked out of the house without having to shoot him leads me to wonder if he wasn’t completely helpless, emotionally speaking.
aimai
@JPL: That is harder than you think. I also think the cultural sexism of Texas may have been at play–ridiculous for a state in which a woman famously ran over her husband for cheating on her and where owning and shooting guns is a cultural trope. But I doubt very much if the police saw the situation in the home as one that fell easily under a “domestic violence” heading in which the husband and children needed to be protected from the mother.
Villago Delenda Est
@gogol’s wife: Guns don’t kill people, you know.
Just repeating the mantra of the Ammosexuals. They are fixated on blaming anything but the ready availability of firearms for all these shootings which are just people shooting at people obviously without firearms.
Mark k
Cole, you’re reading the article wrong. They want to know how and why a concealed carry permit was denied to this innocent woman. they even explained how distraught this made her, and the consequences of “gun regulations” having done nothing to prevent what was going to happen from happening, and probably made the whole situation worse. if only her daughters had remembered to get a concealed carry, only one would be dead, not two. that’s a 100% increase.
and anyone who thinks I’m being sarcastic, did anyone see mentioned in the article anything about her relation, color, creed, or funny clothes? did the reporter dwell on any funny names given to anyone? then this isn’t a terrorist story, and if everyone was black wouldn’t be written up in the news except to draw attention to criminal history.
Juju
As a non gun person, I have no idea how long it takes to reload a gun. The article mentioned that the mother had to reload the gun to finish killing one of the daughters. Would that have been enough time to whack the crap out of the mother or something, anything?
JPL
@geg6: Since this was a situation that was ongoing over years, taking the kids with him, was probably not an option. A friend’s son, accepted a job out of Texas, and the family moved. When it appeared that the wife’s depression was hurting the children, he divorced and got custody. She had to have supervised visits, until the children were older. He had researched Texas law and received advice from an attorney. That was only twelve years ago, and it sounds as though, this situation had been ongoing that long.
Being willing and able to move is not an option everyone has.
Villago Delenda Est
@Juju: Since the woman was paranoid that someone (hello scary Kenyan terrorist!) might take away her semi-automatic pistol, I’m assuming the weapon was replaceable magazine fed, which mean she got rid of the empty clip (I use this term to annoy the ever-lovin’ shit out of ammosexuals) and inserted one with rounds to continue her law abiding use of firearms.
No One You Know
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for posting that.
daves09
If this story were reversed-if he had killed the daughters-would you be blaming the wife for not taking his guns away? Or would it be all how terrible for her, how will she ever recover, what a monster he must have been. But because it is a man, he should suffer forever because he failed to control his wife. Because that’s what real men do.
Sexism in our society is so deep, and effects all aspects of life, that even when we are doing it we remain oblivious.
Juju
@Villago Delenda Est: So not a lot of time? Thanks for the information. I guess the husband needed a good mother with a gun to counteract the bad mother with a gun.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@geg6: Its almost as if he was suffering from, I don’t know, DOMESTIC FUCKING ABUSE.
No One You Know
@efgoldman: Yes, indeed.
JPL
@daves09: Truth be known, there was nothing stopping her from buying another gun, and just hiding it better. We don’t even know, whether or not she had threatened the daughters or husband before. It sounds as though she tried to hurt herself several times, not necessarily anyone else.
Nora
I’m not blaming anyone, but my experience with a suicidal member of the family was that the first thing the therapist told us to do was take all the guns out of the house. I can’t imagine any reasonable therapist NOT saying something like that in this case. Maybe the husband tried to take the guns out of the house, maybe he didn’t succeed, but I know that when you’re talking about someone who’s potentially suicidal (let alone whacked out enough to want to kill her children to punish her husband), the people who care about that person should make a special effort to take the guns away, at least temporarily.
ShadeTail
@Technocrat:
No it couldn’t have, because that wouldn’t have been a big enough display. *She was making a very deliberate statement.* And that particular statement couldn’t have been made any other way.
Really now, the excuses people are making here are starting to sound like the NRA has invaded this page. Not wanting to blame the victim is all fine and well, but letting the gun-nuttery off the hook in the process is just dumb. And yet, far too many people both in real life and here in this discussion thread have done exactly that.
prn
The father is a gun nut too. His recently deleted Twitter account had all sorts of pro-gun and anti-Obama stuff on it. He may not be responsible for his wife’s derangement but he certainly helped reinforce it
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
I don’t agree with blaming the husband here.
KHOU has some more details above the WaPo story:
Yes, there shouldn’t have been a gun in the house. Almost nobody should have a gun in the house. But I don’t think this guy (and his daughters) should be blamed for what happened. The wife had horrible mental issues and snapped.
They tried all kinds of ways to get help for her – they didn’t ignore her problems. It didn’t work.
We can’t know, of course, but it sounds to me like she would have been just as ‘Ok’ to stab her daughters to death, or go for a drive with them and wreck the car, or any number of other things that would have killed or maim them.
I’m all for much tighter restrictions on guns in the home, but I don’t think this is an especially good example of why it’s needed. And I don’t think that blaming the husband is productive or fair.
YMMV.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Thank you.
I’ve told the story here before but I worked at a suicide hotline/community mental health center 40+ yrs ago. Saw clients in person, talked to a lot of people on the phone, in nearly 4 yrs had one suicide call. Sounded like a middle aged woman, rather pleasant but she said she was done and was going to kill herself. I talked for 45 minutes. If you could you were supposed to call the cops and get them to trace the call. But that generally took at least an hour so it rarely happened. Anyway after about 45 minutes she said goodbye and hung up. Nothing I could do, not with the training, not with any amount of compassion. I don’t know if she went through with it or not but the woman on duty with me, about my moms age, housewife, mother, wonderful person, told me, “You gave her 45 minutes. That’s more than she had when she called.”
If someone has made up their mind and has some means, they are going to do it. They may not succeed, they may do far more damage than can be imagined but something is going to happen. And it won’t be pretty.
On the case in hand, I’m of 2 minds. On one hand I agree with JC, there was a step that could have been done, remove the guns. But would it have been of any benefit in the long run? It seems like she would have just gotten another gun, it’s not like they aren’t easily obtainable, especially in TX. On the other hand this man seems rather compassionate, has tried to get her help several times, such as is available these days, maybe he was at his wits ends on what else to do. And it’s pretty clear he will be suffering the rest of his life.
JGabriel
Seriously? She shot her own daughters to death, and they’re going to investigate why she wasn’t approved for a concealed carry permit?
I guess that’s Texan priorities for you.
trollhattan
@Helen:
A giant walked among us. R.I.P. sir.
prn
The cops removed multiple guns from the house. The oldest daughter suffered from anxiety, was worried about her mom having access to guns, and was concerned about her little sister being in the midst of all that crazy. Maybe dad was emotionally abused but at some point he should have taken steps to protect his kids or get help if he wasn’t capable of handling the situation. Same would be true if the genders were reversed
Eric U.
I think “investigate” is just an overblown word for “looking into it” to answer an obvious question.
I really doubt this would have happened if there hadn’t been a gun, but it sounds as if the husband wasn’t the person to think that way. And we should really ban removable magazine guns, a lot of these situations would be much less deadly
AnotherBruce
@MD Rackham: So you would be shitting on the mother if the father had been the one to shoot the daughters? Fuck you, try to be a human being, and that goes for Cole too. BTW, it wasn’t an arsenal, it was one gun.
Technocrat
@ShadeTail:
I don’t pretend to be able to read minds, so I don’t know that this is true. What I do know, is that she killed her own daughters in front of her husband. That says a lot more than the method she used. When a drunken man beats his wife to death, the story isn’t about his fists.
Ian
Only in the United States.
sunny raines
if only @trollhattan: more like road kill
trollhattan
Not that California is a gun-free refuge (San Berdoo, anyone?) but I’ll let the NRA sum things up.
Yeah, draconian now means you only get to (leagally) unload ten rounds max before reloading and you can’t do it with a “bullet button” any longer.
AnotherBruce
Ok I fucked up, there was an arsenal. Yes, he should have removed the arsenal. But I still think it’s wrong to crap on him. Yes he will feel guilty the rest of his life.
notquiteblindbutcertainlynearsighted
@Emma: I agree. I am shocked that people seem to know how this should have been handled. That if only this one thing had been done, the man would have celebrated his birthday, his elder daughter would have been safely married, his family would be intact and alive.
prn
The mom had moved out of the house for a time, and the couple had recently reconciled. Maybe dad should have put his foot down and said “You can’t bring the guns with you”. Maybe she would have hidden them, maybe she would have bought new ones, maybe she would have stabbed her daughters to death. But maybe, just maybe, if dad had stood up to her his kids would still be alive. I really do feel bad for the guy, but this didn’t happen in a vacuum, it wasn’t fate. There could have been a different outcome
James E Powell
We can talk about making the home safe by getting the guns out, but this is America.
Won’t take much time to re-arm.
trollhattan
@prn:
Well said.
Betty Cracker
@AnotherBruce: Not sure that’s true (that she had one gun only). According to WaPo, she posted the following online:
At any rate, it’s pretty clear now she shouldn’t have had any fucking guns…
ETA: Never mind…I see you’ve posted a correction. Last point still stands.
Technocrat
Honestly, I think the idea that he should have “done something” misses the plot completely. Here’s how it might have gone:
Her: “Where’s my gun?”
Him: “I gave it away. No more guns in the house”
Her: “Ok. How about you get my gun back, and I don’t torch your mother’s house?”.
She KILLED HER OWN KIDS IN FRONT OF HIM. I want to see some of you face someone like that down.
prn
Just to be clear, I’m not trying to shit on the guy. I don’t think he’s evil, I think he was in a crappy situation. That said, he was very dumb about potential for disaster, and he failed to do what he could have done to protect his children. I think it’s important to remember that this didn’t have to happen, it wasn’t inevitable
Villago Delenda Est
@Juju: Yes, very fast reload on those. Which is the entire point when you’re using your firearm to throw a lot of rounds at relatives who have pissed you off.
Betty Cracker
Regarding the husband’s lack of action: I’m just speculating, as are we all. But my father is a gun nut, so I know the mentality. It probably just never occurred to him to get rid of the guns. To folks in that culture, guns are as ubiquitous as forks. It sounds insane to us, but so does keeping a loaded handgun in an unlocked drawer in a houseful of children, something that is commonly done.
When my daughter was a toddler, I told my dad I wouldn’t let her visit his home until he bought a gun safe and locked up all the guns. He did, but he and the rest of that side of the family acted like I was a raving lunatic on the issue. It was as if I’d asked them to put tin foil on the windows to block gamma rays. To them, I’M the nut.
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan: The NRA is a terrorist organization. It’s time to start treating it like one.
Ruckus
@prn:
I’ll put this in the maybe column. Yes it is certainly possible to have a different outcome. But someone with severe enough mental issues to kill their own children is not nearly as likely to be stopped if they really set their mind to it. The method might change, then again TX, so removing one gun most likely wouldn’t make the difference. I’m not against removing the guns, I carried a loaded gun in the military and I used to hunt but I see no real use for wide open gun possession in a modern society. And my observations of gun humpers are that currently the vast majority of them shouldn’t have guns of any type, they are one or two steps away from a deadly discharge. BTW I stopped hunting decades ago after coming within a very few inches of being shot on more than one occasion, once would have been in the head by what the person pulling the trigger said was less than an inch from said head. There have always been people who should not have a deadly weapon anywhere near them and I fear, from experience, those are exactly the people who want them.
prn
Technocrat,
If she threatens to burn down Grandma’s house, you call the police and make sure Grandma’s not home. No one dies. I get that she was unpredictable. But someone needed to step up, there were way too many warning signs. I don’t think “She’s nuts, we can’t do anything” is an optimal response
Neutron Flux
I have lived through a similar situation, but with a much better outcome. Why did I take all of the guns out of the house? Only to make me feel better if things went bad. It is true that you can’t effectively stop a mentally ill person that is committed to violence and that the outcome may be terrible. For me, if the outcome was to be terrible, I wanted to make sure that I had done all I could and then I could live with the results. Not live happily, but live knowing I had done everything that I could reasonably do.
prn
Ruckus,
My impression of the situation is that she hadn’t been planning forever to kill her kids, I think it was basically an impulsive act. Mom and dad had been arguing for at least a day, she had been arguing with the oldest daughter and trying to ground her (a 22 year old, definitely inappropriate parenting). Dad says he wants a divorce, she falls apart. If there had been no guns around, she might have had enough time to calm down a bit
prn
Neutron Flux,
Exactly! Getting rid of the guns doesn’t solve the problem, but it gives you breathing room, and maybe more time to react during a crisis
Ruckus
@prn:
This sounds like a very, very valid point. But he did do something. She was seen and released by mental health professionals on more than one occasion. Removing the guns, if there was a way to insure that they stayed removed would have helped and maybe been the optimal response. It seemingly would not have made the situation much worse, but maybe just changed the methodology.
But what about the mental health issues? I’d say it’s pretty obvious that she had them but that any treatment she received was not good enough. Most of the discussion has focused on taking away the methodology but not the motivation. This is another issue that we, the American public have to face. We do a really shitty job of dealing with mental health. The availability, the stigma, even the discussion.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@No One You Know: You are very welcome, and I’m happy it was useful to someone.
@Ruckus: The woman working with you was wise, and I hope her words offered some comfort. Sometimes people are worn out, and it’s the only option for them. I believe David Foster Wallace was exhausted when he died.
Mike J
@trollhattan: My preferred new gun law would outlaw breech loaders. Muzzle loaders only, no cartridges allowed (powder & bullets must be loaded individually).
Mnemosyne
@daves09:
Yes, and THAT’S THE PROBLEM. It’s way too fucking easy to buy a deadly weapon.
A multi-pronged approach is needed here, and making it harder to buy a gun is one of the prongs.
Neutron Flux
@Ruckus: Exactly. Even in the system, it is difficult to convince the administrators that this person is crazy and needs help. A lot of help. If you have not done your research and come prepared to advocate, you will be steamrolled into the path of least resistance.
Technocrat
@prn:
I won’t argue that it’s an optimal response, no. But I don’t think optimal responses are always available to people. I feel certain that if this were a woman who had been killed by a gun-wielding husband, we wouldn’t be saying she should have “done something”:
‘Why Didn’t You Just Leave?’ Six Domestic Violence Survivors Explain Why It’s Never That Simple
ETA: The commentariat seems generally to see this as a gun violence story. I see it as a domestic violence story. But I also agree that less guns are better overall. Where I disagree is that defusing this was his responsibility.
prn
@Ruckus,
I basically agree with you. Yeah, she was mentally ill, it sounds like her husband had tried to get her help. I don’t think there was much of a chance that there could have been a completely happy ending. But I gotta think if the guns weren’t present, everyone would be alive today. Miserable and screaming at each other, maybe causing injuries, but still alive with a hope for better times
Ruckus
@prn:
I don’t disagree with you on removing the guns. That would have at least made it more difficult for her to follow through on her thoughts, maybe taken the heat off for some period of time. But what comes next? What does the husband do? He’s insured that she’s been seen by mental health professionals, let’s go along with the no guns for a moment, what is his next move? Her next move? She needs help, she’s not getting it. What do we do when that impulse hits her again? And BTW I don’t believe this was an impulse, just my spidey sense talking. She may have been triggered by something that happened that day, but I’d bet she had this in her head for a while.
dogwood
@prn:
Given that social media suggests both the husband and wife were paranoid gun nuts, removing guns from the home no matter how crazy she became was never an option.
prn
@Technocrat,
I get where you’re coming from, and I agree, there probably was domestic abuse going on. But I think this situation is a little different, not because the abused spouse was male, but because he had more options available to him. He was the sole breadwinner, so he wasn’t financially dependent on her. Their kids were essentially adults so there weren’t any potential custody issues. She had moved out of the house at one point, which I think could have given him a little leverage about the presence of guns in the home. It was definitely a fucked up situation, but it could have been made safer for the kids, is what I’m trying to get at
Ruckus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
She was wise and super sharp. She understood life, she had her shit together in a real small pile. Most of us don’t.
And yes it helped a bit. But I left out the part about the woman on the phone where I tell you she was calm and well spoken and not at all rushed or flustered. It made me think she had thought about suicide and decided that it was the best and only option. Her mind was giving me (or someone) one last chance to show her that she was wrong. I still believe to this day she decided that she had made the best decision. And I can still hear her voice.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Eric U.:
Yep. All this amounts to is a “No, I don’t have that information at hand at the moment, but I’ll get someone to pull the records” response to a reporter’s question.
prn
@dogwood,
Sadly, I think you’re right. I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that people are okay with multiple guns in a house where someone has already attempted suicide THREE TIMES!
Juju
@Villago Delenda Est: I had an uncle who committed suicide with his father’s gun. I never met him, he did it before I was born, but my father, who was never really pro gun, became adamant that there would never be guns in his house. This is the way I was brought up. I have never seen a gun in person. Only in movies and tv. Possibly on the Internet. I don’t think I’ll have trouble keeping it that way.
Ruckus
@prn:
You obviously are not a gun nut.
I can’t wrap my head around the whole argument that is being made for guns today at all. It’s the same logic that got us into Iraq. “There is a little killing going on, let’s get involved and ramp that up ten thousand times. That will fix everything.”
Technocrat
@Ruckus:
That gave me chills.
My father was given to threatening suicide. When I was 11, he made my mom drive him and us from Philly to New York so he could “die with the bums”. When we got there, he changed his mind. That old fucker will turn 79 this year, and he has threatened to off himself more or less biannually.
Perhaps due to this, I have this huge empathic hole where suicides are concerned. I’m glad people like you are out there to give people help when they need it. I couldn’t do it.
Juju
@prn: I wonder if the impulse to kill her children was related to any of the antidepressants she was taking? Those can cause suicidal and homicidal impulses in some users.
Dmbeaster
@ShadeTail: And if they would allow the reaearch, there would be clear proof about the fact that the likelihood of a homicide is much greater in households with guns.
Ruckus
@Technocrat:
I haven’t done it for decades. It takes a certain type of person. I’m not enough of one of those. Close maybe, but not close enough. Although I did find that once you find your way around it isn’t as difficult as it seems. The problem is that most people don’t know how to keep enough distance, how to defuse the words and actions of the client and separate them from yourself. The lady I worked with had perfected that, at least outwardly. I was too young to really get that then.
Mnemosyne
@Juju:
I doubt it. Like I said, this really seems like an absolutely classic domestic abuse story. I’ll bet the friends of the daughters and the bereaved fiancé will have some really interesting stories to tell the police.
prn
@Ruckus,
Nope, never owned one, can’t imagine I ever will. Grew up among hunters, my daughter is currently dating a cop (a nice one that I’m not worried about), so I’m okay with rational people owning guns. What freaks me out is the unhinged out-of-touch-with-all-reality attitudes that seem so abundant today, and how the rational gun owners just go along with the craziness because “rights”. Violent crime is at an all-time low, Joe NRA isn’t keeping the government in check, and he’s not doing anything to defeat Isis. He should just admit he has guns cuz he LIKES them
geg6
@JPL:
That is only one of many options available (or perhaps not) to him. However, he had others. Getting rid of the guns is still the best option he had, but if he didn’t want to do that, then he closed off his most obvious safety valve.
Look, I understand his situation was difficult but having the gun in his house, whosever gun it is, was just negligent. Sorry, but he doesn’t get a pass from me on that. I’ve dealt with an abusive mentally ill person with guns in my own life. No matter what, you get rid of the guns.
geg6
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
Having been there and done that, I know what he was suffering from. Didn’t stop me.
Ruckus
@prn:
Nah, he should admit he has guns because he thinks his dick is too small. That would be closer to the truth.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Ruckus: Based on what you describe, a support your belief that based on her calm approach to the discussion, her decision had been made and she believed it was the best one. Based on that, I also believe that no one could have changed her mind, and you gave her 45 minutes to talk. That was a mitzvah.
Nick
Imagine that over and over again, important civil rights leaders were found to be exploiting minorities — pimping out women, running sweatshops, owning check-cashing businesses, accepting bribes. How long and how well publicized would the Congressional hearings be, with Republicans interviewing the victims of their enemies?
When was the last time you saw a Congressional hearing interviewing the victims of prominent guns-rights promoters? Subpoenaing the woman whose kid shot her through the car? This guy, whose family was gunned down in front of him? How are we ever going to get anywhere so long as this awful ‘protect myself and my family’ bullshit goes unchallenged? Where are the Democrats shouting about this shit? “AGAIN, WE SEE A CRAZY GUN HUMPER MURDERING PEOPLE!” They need to make the phrase ‘protect myself’ stink in the noses of everyone who hears it.
Also, stop micro-analyzing the details of ‘gun in house’, because you don’t know them and you sound like Republicans wondering what the countertops are made of. Just for starters, the woman had been depressed ever since her grandfather died; the gun was a legacy from him. You have no idea how hard it would have been to remove it, or what the consequences would have been. The obvious fact that it is, in Texas, possible to REPLACE a lost gun should give you pause that this is a simple and permanent solution.
dogwood
@Ruckus:
We’re at a 40 year low of citizens who live in homes with firearms. White gun nuts are buying arsenals. This family had 10 guns. But it’s not just tiny dick syndrome that motivates this madness; there’s a percentage of people who are naturally fearful, and easily manipulated. The gun manufacturers are effectively marketing to women who fit this description. The world is changing pretty rapidly, and if you are afraid of gays, blacks, browns, Muslims etc. the gun is some symbol of control. And the more guns you have the more control you think you have. Ultimately, however, the gun starts to control you. There’s nothing rational about this fear and paranoia, and there’s nothing rational about their gun dependency.
prn
@Ruckus,
Well, I’m trying hard to be charitable here. I feel really bad for Jason Sheetz, but part of me really wants to yell “What the fuck were you thinking?” And if I’d had the chance, I would have told Christy Sheetz “You’re not well, you need to give up guns forever” And I’m sure neither of them would listen to me or anyone else, so here we are…
And ditto on what a hip hop artist said, you did something very good. Maybe she changed her mind, maybe not, but at least she had the chance to reconsider
Amaranthine RBG
@cokane: No, clearly he should be prosecuted for negligence. He needs to suffer more. Plus which, enhancing his suffering will assist people with maintaining their smug judgements. That and the people who made the guns, too.
Amaranthine RBG
@Ruckus:
I know, right? The the woman who shot her kids – she didn’t even have a dick (presumably). So you can see why she was so angry.
Ruckus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
That was my fellow counselor’s take on it. Like I said it helped a bit but you always want to do more. But it is ultimately the patient’s will to understand and change. Medication may be needed, depending on the condition. And taking that medication takes the patient’s will to change their behavior to get better. I have seen people who were plenty screwed up and verbally adamant that they weren’t going to change, they couldn’t change, show up for session week after week. And get sloooowly better till one day, it hits them, the totality of the fractions of inches of improvement that have started to add up and even they can see that change is possible. I’ve also seen someone be given a simple tool that no one had showed them before and they get it immediately, and it changes everything. The range of human emotions and what we do with them is staggering.
Gvg
I think this problem has more than one part.
Guns are too easy to get so taking them away tends not to work which we know so we have defeatism.
Nobody so far has mentioned the shortage of mental health solutions. Families want to do something but can’t. It’s not actually as good a science as body medicine to coin a phrase. There aren’t enough professionals in supply and it doesn’t actually work a lot of the time. People come to the attention of a doctor or hospital or cop and there aren’t enough beds so even if they go somewhere it’s just triage stabilizing and kick me out because 3 other people need the bed. Then what? Family just don’t know what to do even if they have money.
In the past we took away innocent people’s rights and locked them up so now we have laws preventing that and we aren’t locking up those we should at least on purpose and helpfully. Supposedly a lot of regular prisoners are really just incompetent mentally ill. We don’t even have the facilities anymore. We need them. Involuntary lock ups but balance with rights and proof and monitoring. Hard and costs money. People don’t want to see the need. Political and cultural problem.
Lots of mental health problems aren’t anything like this and Counselors can’t help if they don’t promise and deliver confidentiality. Most after tragedies have people yelling for more background screening but how do you actually deliver the info about killer/suicidal ones without delivering info about all the other personal info? There needs to be a mechanism to get off too. Some people get depressed then after say grief passes they are ok again but for a time it might be a bad idea to let a gun be around.
The Nra has been promoting nuttiness for years and it’s making people give gun owners to much space and respect.
Cops can’t actually provide effective protection for possibly years on all the people who need it and society hasn’t got the will to lock up people before they kill. Besides I am not sure the professionals could actually give good judgement on who.
This particular case sounds like dad was also in need of treatment.
Ruckus
@Amaranthine RBG:
You make a valid point but I was talking about the larger picture. The one where far more men than women seem to have issues with guns. It’s a perceived lack of power thing. And you are correct, anyone can have that issue. It seems that women would be more likely to have lack of power issues, given our culture, but it seems that it’s more likely it’s men with the issues. Not being stricken with the disease I’m not sure how it works, YMMV.
nutella
Those of you saying the husband should have taken the wife’s guns away:
They are in Texas.
She is the legal owner of the guns.
If he had taken them away she would have called the cops to report a theft.
The cops would have arrested him.
The cops would have returned her guns to her.
She should have been more pissed off.
He would have a criminal record.
Easy! Why didn’t he just do that? It would have solved everything!
Until the legal environment is changed, and of course it should be, people have to live in the legal environment they’ve got.
Ruckus
@prn:
John yelled. People responded that was a bridge too far. But I think many of us here and probably a majority of the people would ask the same question, “What the fuck were you thinking?” Being involved in a desperate mental health crisis with the options and issues that we have in this country is very limiting, as several of us have discussed above. So “What the fuck were you thinking?”, becomes a bit different in reality. In some ways it is an even more valid question and in other ways it doesn’t help at all.
For sure fewer guns might help but we will probably never get rid of all guns. Well at least in my lifetime. The country is too big, there are too many places to hide weapons and we have this amendment that keeps getting misinterpreted to the point of all guns all the time. It is a disease, currently without a cure, hopefully we will find one.
prn
@nutella:
Maybe she would have called the cops, maybe not. Sure, she’s gonna be pissed as hell, but sounds like she was angry a lot of the time.
She calls the cops, he tells them, “Sure, I put them where she can’t have them, she’s tried to kill herself three times”. At that point, I don’t think the cops are going to do anything. But say they arrest him; he gets a lawyer and is out on bail in no time. No prosecutor is going to bring him to trial given the suicidal wife, charges will be dropped. If it does go to trial, he’s got a good chance of being found innocent. If not, chances are he pays a fine and that’s it. Sure he’s got a record now, but maybe she doesn’t manage to get the guns back, or replace them, or maybe she realizes, “Hey, he did this for my own good”.
Whatever happens in this scenario, if he takes the guns and puts them into storage, that’s a window of time where she can’t use the guns against herself or the children. Maybe it’s a brief window, but it’s something.
I dunno, I’d risk arrest and a criminal record if I thought my kids might be at risk
nutella
Nice fairy tale, but they are in TEXAS.
prn
@nutella:
So what? Even in Texas, especially in Texas, affluent white guys are treated well by the justice system. Worse case scenario, he ends up with a misdemeanor conviction and a fine, he’s not going to prison.
Yeah, it would be a tough path, no doubt. But parenting is hard sometimes
rikyrah
This story is so horrible ???
Those poor daughters.