NRA official barred from owning guns while under protection from abuse order

62-year-old Richard D'Alauro was charged in 2010 with misdemeanor assault, endangering the welfare of a child and a noncriminal charge of harassment as the result of a domestic dispute with his wife. At the time of his arrest, police confiscated 39 guns (a variety of handguns, shotguns and rifles) from his East Northport, New York home.
Maribeth D'Alauro, who divorced her husband after the incident, said she suffered from "years of domestic violence" and describes her ex-husband as a bully.
In October D'Alauro pleaded guilty to harassment charges, admitting to the court that he intended to "harass, annoy or alarm" his wife "by subjecting her to physical contact." The judge ordered a protection from abuse order against D'Alauro for one year, during which time he is banned from possessing firearms.
D'Aluro is a field representative for the NRA. And while the NRA declined to comment on the case, D'Alauro's lawyer said is was of "no significance whatsoever" that D'Alauro can't possess a gun adding "the NRA does not require its employees to own guns."

Mom pulls out gun during fight at Chuck E. Cheese

30-year-old Tawana Bourne, of Middletown, Connecticut, was at the Chuck E. Cheese in Newington with her son when she got into a fight with Shkurte Berisha, another mom at the restaurant.
During the fight Bourne allegedly pulled a .380 caliber semiautomatic handgun out of her pocket and chambered a round.
Berisha reported that the fight started when she told Bourne's five-year-old son to not push her two-year-old daughter. She said Bourne then told her to "watch your tone with my son," to which Berisha replied that Bourne should watch her child.
Bourne, who has a valid permit for the handgun, was arrested and charged with breach of peace, three counts of risk of injury to a minor, first-degree reckless endangerment and second-degree threatening. She was released on $50,000 bail.
Bourne is actively involved with There is Hope, a male mentoring program that targets at-risk youth engaging in risky behavior.

Concealed weapons permit holder shoots and kills teen over loud music

45-year-old Michael Dunn, of Satellite Beach, Florida was in Jacksonville for his son's wedding when he and his girlfriend stopped at a convenience store. Dunn waited in the car while his girlfriend went inside. While waiting in the parking lot Dunn asked a group of teens in an SUV next to him to turn their music down.
Dunn and 17-year-old Jordan Davis, who was sitting in the back seat of the SUV, exchanged words. Dunn then pulled out a gun and shot eight or nine times into the SUV. Jordan was hit twice and died of his injuries.
Dunn and his girlfriend left the scene and drove back to their hotel and when they saw the news the next morning that someone had been killed in the shooting, they went back to Dunn's home in Brevard County.
Police were able to get a description of Dunn and the license plate of his car from witnesses to the shooting. Police tracked Dunn to his home and arrested him on charges of murder and attempted murder.
Dunn's lawyer told reporters, "We can't say what the defense will be at this state..but Stand Your Ground is a possibility."
According to Dunn's lawyer Dunn is "an avid firearms owner" and "has a concealed weapons permit" and felt threatened when "he started hearing epithets."
Dunn's lawyer said Dunn "rolled down his window and politely said, 'Would you mind turning that music down?' and the driver apparently turned it off immediately. Then he hears from the back, 'That (expletive), he can't, that (expletive), we ain't going to tell us where to turn our music down.'" The lawyer continued, saying Dunn "saw a shotgun barrel come up in the rear passenger window, he saw about three of four inches of it. He estimated the gauge of the shotgun, the type, everything, he's very familiar with firearms, as I said, owns firearms and has since he was in third grade. He immediately went into self-defense mode, which any responsible firearms owner would do."
Police, however, did not find any guns in the SUV.
Psychology studies have found that someone holding a gun is more likely to perceive others as also being armed, even when they are not.
One such study, Action alters object identification: Wielding a gun increased the bias to see guns, published in the Oct. 2012 Journal of Experimental Psychology, concluded:

Participants determined whether another person was holding a gun or a neutral object. Critically, the participant did this while holding and responding with either a gun or a neutral object. Responsing with a gun biased observers to report "gun present" more than did responding with a ball. Thus, by virtue of affording a perceiver the opportunity to use a gun, he or she was more likely to classify objects in a scene as a gun and, as a result, to engage in threat-induced behavior (raising a firearm to shoot).

Concealed weapons permit holder drops gun in elementary school, doesn't realize it

Over the weekend, a teacher at Plaza Towers Elementary school in Moore, Oklahoma, and her relative went to the school to fix a computer in another teacher's room. The unidentified man had forgotten that he had a handgun in his pocket. While there, the gun fell out of his pocket and the two left, not realizing they were leaving a gun behind.
Monday morning, the classroom teacher came in and found the loaded gun on his chair. He notified administrators who locked down the school. Police were called and they searched the building while the students were kept in the school cafeteria.
When the owner of the gun saw reports on the news he realized that the gun was his and contacted police. The man has a concealed weapons permit which allows him to carry the loaded, hidden gun in public.
Police have turned the investigation over to the district attorney's office for possible charges.
There is no excuse for not knowing where your loaded gun is at all times.

Man shoots and kills highway patrol officer during routine traffic stop

Tuesday morning around 8:30 a.m., California Highway Patrol Officers pulled over 36-year-old Christoper Lacy, of Corning, CA on southbound I-680. According to a sheriff's spokesperson, video from a CHP dashboard camera showed Officer Kenyon Youngstrom speaking with Lacy for about 30 or 40 seconds when Lacy pulled out a gun and opened fire without provocation. Lacy was then shot and killed by Youngstrom's partner.
Officer Youngstrom was stuck in the neck and his spinal cord was severed. He died the next day.
Investigators are unsure of a motive. They found a loaded semi-automatic handgun, two ammunition magazines and a knife in Lacy's Jeep.
Lacy had no criminal record. He was arrested for DUI in 2006 but the charges were later dropped for lack of evidence. He had one fine for speeding.
According to Lacy's father, Lacy was diagnosed as bipolar and put on lithium after he suffered a psychotic break during his senior year at San Francisco State University.
37-year-old Officer Youngstrom leaves a wife and four children.

Man pulls gun on door-to-door salesmen, arrested for assault

51-year-old Charles Cook, of Mansfield, Massachusetts, thought that two men selling magazines door-to-door were being too "aggressive" and didn't have permission to be on the property, so he pulled a gun on them.
The men had come to Cook's apartment and he told them he wasn't interested. He then confronted the two men outside his neighbor's apartment when they knocked on the neighbor's door. Cook held the handgun in his jacket pocket, pointed it at the men and told them to move on.
He was about to call the police to report the men for trespassing when the police came to his door in response to a call from the two men.
Cook had recently moved from Texas to Massachusetts. He had a concealed weapons permit in Texas but had not yet gotten a Massachusetts gun license. Police confiscated his .380-caliber, semi-automatic handgun, which was loaded with seven rounds of ammunition.
Cook was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition, improper storage of a firearm, and two counts of assault by means of a dangerous weapon.

Concealed weapons permit holder pulls gun in store, shoots shopper during argument

66-year-old Jerry Harryman, of Clarkamas, Oregon was standing in the checkout line at a Fred Meyer store. According to another customer, William Young, Harryman was looking over Young's wife's shoulder as she punched her personal id number into the checkout terminal.
"I told him to get back but he kept staring," said Young.
Young and Harryman got into an argument when Harryman pulled out a semiautomatic handgun and pointed it at Young.
As Young grabbed the gun, forcing Harryman's arm down, Harryman pulled the trigger, shooting Young in the leg, just above the knee.
Young was able to get the gun away from Harryman and other shoppers joined in, helping to hold Harryman down.
Both men were taken to the hospital for treatment of their injuries.
Harryman was arrested and charged with first-degree assault. His concealed weapons permit was revoked. He has no previous criminal history.

Man who once pulled gun on meter reader shoots and kills door-to-door salesman

Kenneth Roop, 52 of Cape Coral, Florida told detectives that the man he shot should have respected his three "No Trespassing" signs and that the reason he didn't warn the victim to get off his property was because "I'm not going to give him the chance to do something to me, I was in fear."
30-year-old Nick Rainey, an employee of Blue Ribbon Steak and Seafood,was going door to door selling products. A co-worked who witnessed the shooting said Rainey had knocked on Roop's door but received no answer. He was walking back down the driveway when Roop pullled up in his pickup truck.
The two men had a brief conversation and then Roop pulled out a black handgun and shot Rainey. As Rainey lay on the ground, Roop fired another bullet into the back of his head. Roop told police that he was in fear and thought Rainey was reaching for something and he shot him in the head "for effect."
An off-duty sheriff's deputy who lives in the neighborhood held Roop at gunpoint until the local police arrived.
A former state prosecutor, Ray Sotomayor, called Roop a "time bomb" who "had a screw loose." Sotomayor was the prosecutor in a case against Roop seven years ago when he was accused of pointing a gun at a woman who simply wanted to read his electric meter. He said Roop's attitude was similar to "militia-minded, anti-government" types and that he was obsessed with the idea of guarding his home.
Roop was found not guilty by a jury.
Roop told police he thinks he has about 14 firearms. He also has a valid concealed weapons permit.

Brother of man who shot and killed five people said "we could see this coming"

On Wednesday morning, 40-year-old Ian Stawicki walked into the Cafe Racer restaurant in Seattle, Washington and shot five people. Four of them died. About a half an hour later, Stawicki fatally shot a woman in a parking lot and drove off in her SUV. Four hours later, with police closing in on him, Stawicki knelt down on a city sidewalk and shot himself in the head.
His brother, Andrew, said over the past five years or so Stawicki had changed. "Angry. He was really angry toward everything," Andrew said. "It's no surprise to me this happened. We could see this coming. Nothing good is going to come with that much anger inside of you."
Stawicki had been collecting guns for years and had a concealed weapons permit. He was arrested in 2008 on a domestic-violence charge and in 2010 for fourth-degree assault but both charges were dismissed.
According to his father, Walt, the family knew Stawicki was troubled, but there was nothing they could do to get the concealed carry permit revoked.
"The response to us was, there's nothing we can do, he's not a threat to himself or others, or we haven't had a report of it, or we haven't had to pick him up - call us when its worse," Walt said in a radio interview. "And now it's too late - much worse now, six people are dead."

Woman convicted of threatening teens with gun

33-year-old Susan Sin Desantiago, of Chesterfield, Virginia, claimed she was acting in self-defense when she pulled a 9mm handgun from her car, waved it at a group of teens standing in the road, and held the gun to the head of a 16-year-old girl. But a judge rejected her plea and agreed with the prosecutor who argued, "You don't get to claim self-defense when you're the aggressor."
Desantiago, a law abiding citizen with no criminal record, was found guilty of brandishing a weapon and assault. She was sentenced to 12 months with 10 months suspended on the brandishing charge and to 12 months with all but two weeks suspended on the assault count.
Desantiago was on her way to a doctor's appointment when she passed a group of teenagers who had just gotten off the school bus. Desantiago said the 16-year-old girl cursed at her, and she stopped to admonish the girl about her language, which led to more cursing. Desantiago returned to her home and then headed out again. She said that the teens blocked her path and she panicked and grabbed a gun from the console in her car. The 16-year-old testified that Desantiago walked up to her and placed the gun to her head. "I thought she was going to shoot me."
At that point Desantiago's husband appeared and took the gun from his wife. He testified that the gun used was his, and he put in the car for her protection, "I keep it there for my wife," he said.