A Vocal Gun Rights Supporter Just Murdered His Kids. What Does This Mean?

Updated Wednesday, August 12, 2015, at 9:30 am EST

This past Sunday, Shawn Fuller got drunk, fought with his wife, then grabbed a gun and murdered his two young sons in their own living room.

Local news reported that Fuller and his wife kept the gun in their home “for protection.” And “there is no evidence the couple had a permit to have the weapon.”

According to his Facebook page, Shawn Fuller is a strong supporter of the NRA and many other pro-gun groups, such as Cold Dead Hands and the now-infamous Oath Keepers. He posted pro-gun arguments all over his page, and neighbors said he often had friends over to shoot in the backyard.

Video posted to Fuller’s Facebook page

Clearly, sharing political opinions with a murderer does not imply anything about other gun rights activists. Hell, Fuller’s page is also pro medical marijuana – so he and I share at least one belief too.

The issue is that pro-gun arguments made by Fuller are the exact same arguments made by staunch conservative gun owners across America.

So how do we know who’s who? How do we know, without strict background checks & mental health records, the difference between regular 2nd Amendment supporters and likely criminals?

The answer is: without common sense checks, we can’t tell the difference.

Photo from Facebook

Last week, Shawn Fuller was a good guy with a gun.

This past Saturday, Shawn Fuller was a good guy with a gun.

Then, on Sunday, Shawn Fuller got drunk and killed his kids.

Boom. Now he’s a murderer whose actions couldn’t have been anticipated or prevented. How is that possible?

The only thing that changed was that Fuller committed murder. But suddenly he’s always been a crazy outlier?

How do I know that all the good guys with guns I debate on a regular basis aren’t just like Shawn Fuller on Saturday?
         

What’s the difference between a good guy with a gun and a guy charged with murder? Often, it’s one moment of weakness.

Or rage. Or drunkenness. Or panic.

This doesn’t mean everyone should give up their guns. It means guns are too powerful a tool to go totally unregulated.

Some people are more prone to moments of weakness or rage than others. And there are ways to distinguish those individuals.

Moderate laws – like a background check system without loopholes, and restrictions on those with severe mental illnesses (ex: schizophrenia) – are simply logical.

And 90% of Americans agree.

You know what else 90% of Americans have in common? Concerns about ISIS, and overly salty diets. That’s about it.

90% of the population clearly includes many gun owners as well, which makes sense. Reasonable gun laws allow the average gun owner to prove they pose no threat to society, without giving up any freedoms.

Of course, we will never prevent every shooting death. Sometimes, without any warning, people just snap. But we can prevent a lot of shootings with basic checks, and every single life is precious.

So why haven’t we fixed our gun laws? Because we aren’t yet angry enough to stand up to the NRA & the powerful, wealthy gun lobby.

Will we ever be angry enough? Yes. But what will it take? I hate thinking about the answer.

You know what eventually shifted the nation’s opinion on gay marriage? Over the years, as it slowly became more acceptable to come out as gay, more and more people were forced to confront the issue, because it affected people they loved.

One of my deepest fears is this:

Like gay marriage, gun control will happen when so many Americans have been personally affected by gun violence that they’re forced to rethink this issue too.

Leader of Texas “Open Carry” Group Proves We Need Common Sense Gun Laws

Photo: 5/29/14, in Haltom City, TX (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

 

That’s Kory Watkins – Leader of Open Carry Tarrant County in Texas.

Open Carry Texas has publicly distanced itself from him. 

Gun owners across the country have declared furiously on social media that he’s making them all look bad.

Bob Owens – Editor of BearingArms.com – has called Kory the “single most effective advocate for gun control in the United States.”

Bob might be correct – but no one is thinking about why.

Kory Watkins demonstrates perfectly the need for common sense, middle ground gun laws.

And maybe he can be the reason we come together to make them happen.

Photo Credit: http://ow.ly/IHpBA

Kory is not the average gun owner. Most gun owners are good, mentally healthy, law-abiding citizens without arrest records or histories of threats or violence.

But Kory has an arrest record (for interfering with a police officer – he does that a lot. A lot.).

He often uses social media to talk armed takeover of the government, and he has recently posted video of himself online threatening the lives of government officials who vote against open carry laws in Texas (2:00 & 2:25).

So why does Kory still own guns? And how did he get those guns in the first place?

Gun owners are rightly frustrated when gun control activists lump them all together.

It is wrong and utterly ridiculous to assume that anyone defending the right to own and carry firearms is a crazy person.

However, when we don’t even have a system capable of flagging a guy who consistently makes threats and interferes with police as someone who probably shouldn’t be in possession of firearms…we’ve got a problem.

How are we supposed to feel confident that the gun owners we meet are the good guys?

How can we be sure that guns are only being sold to mentally stable individuals when we see proof that people like Kory also have easy access?

Gun owners should support common sense laws like a fully funded, fully-staffed, background check system – with mental health checks and without loopholes (loophole examples: online sales, personal sales, gun show sales).

It would make arguing that you’re one of the good guys with guns a hell of a lot easier.

Gun rights activists are correct – Kory isn’t like most gun owners. He makes them all look bad. But Kory still exists. And he still owns guns.

And Kory also isn’t the only gun owner who acts the way he does.

Death threat image – used as cover photo for the Facebook group “Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America Is A Fraud”

If we all agree to support laws such as one that would fix our broken background check system, maybe we can weed out some of the people who make all gun owners look bad.

If we keep giving people like Kory (and Veronica Dunnachie, and Byron Williams, and the people who threatened one lawmaker to the point of needing a security detail, and the people who sent death threats to gun dealers who wanted to sell smart guns…) easy access to firearms, it’s going to be a lot harder to argue that most gun owners are good.

or that good guys with guns are keeping us safe.

or that the existing background check system is regulation enough.

Well-written gun control laws would not take rights from law-abiding citizens. There is a middle ground. 

It’s time for good guys with guns to help us prevent as many bad guys as possible from getting guns – if only to protect the good guy reputation.

Hey Toledo, Since You Can’t Do Dishes or Laundry….

Blue-green algae from a similar water crisis in China. Microcystin toxin (currently poisoning Toledo’s water) is a product of an abundance of this appetizing stuff – which uses nutrients like phosphorus to grow.
“…the increased presence of nutrients such as phosphorous is largely due to poor farming practices…as well as effluent and run-off from towns and cities near waterways.”
-NOAA Center of Excellence for Great Lakes and Human Health (CEGLHH)

So you live in a city without water.

You’re rationing sips of H2O like the end times are upon us, and everyone’s starting to smell pretty damn funky (sure, they say you can shower as long as you don’t get the water in any orifices or cuts, but screw that. I’m no daredevil).

What is there to do? You can’t wash the dishes that are piling up in the kitchen. You can’t do the laundry or take the kids swimming. Can’t even go out to eat – because boiling this poisonous sludge somehow makes the situation worse, and every restaurant in the city is closed.

So, while you’re adjusting to your new post-apocalyptic lifestyle, maybe you could take a few minutes to call and/or email your local congressmen.
Tell them they better either distribute bottled water outside random high schools for the rest of eternity, or pass a few $%&(@! environmental-protection bills so we can go back to life as it once was.

Oh look, I found a list of every Ohio representative by county and their phone numbers:

http://www.ohiohouse.gov/members/member-by-county

(If you click on a person’s name, you are taken to their personal page which just so happens to provide their email address also)

OMG, and here is the list of every Ohio state senator and THEIR contact information:

http://www.ohiosenate.gov/senate/members/senate-directory

Not the type of person who normally calls their congressmen?
You’re also not the type of person who normally stands in line for three hours waiting for someone to drive up from Columbus with a few ounces of that thing that gives you life.

Don’t live in Toledo? Do you want this happening in your city? Call your congressman already!

 

EDIT: Please be polite when you call your congressmen. The poor interns you’re talking to didn’t cause our water woes.