Mad gun sales
Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2014 2:17 am
Kansas City, Missouri: A Washington, DC organisation aimed at reducing gun violence is suing an Missouri gun store in the death of a Lafayette County man shot and killed by his mentally troubled daughter.
The store's operators should have heeded a warning from the daughter's mother not to sell a gun to a person in such an unsettled psychological state, the organisation's lawyers said.
"We are not anti-gun, we are not anti-Second Amendment," Jonathan E. Lowy, director of the Legal Action Project of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said on Wednesday, adding that the litigation is not aimed at eroding the rights of responsible gun owners or dealers.
"However, there are a few bad apples," he said at a news conference in North Kansas City. With the lawsuit, "we are trying to send a message to stop putting profit over people."
The complaint, filed Wednesday in Lafayette County Circuit Court, says that in June 2012, Odessa Gun & Pawn sold a .45-calibre pistol to Colby Sue Weathers and that Ms Weathers used the gun to fatally shoot her father soon after. Store personnel sold her a gun despite the pleas of her mother, Janet Delana, who had called the store two days earlier to warn them of her daughter's illness, according to the lawsuit.
"I just thought, 'Maybe I can be proactive,'" Ms Delana said Wednesday.
"I said, 'Please, please, I'm begging you as a mother, don't sell a gun to her.' They did."
The wrongful-death lawsuit accuses three men affiliated with the shop of negligence.
A person answering a phone at the store Wednesday declined to comment.
Ms Weathers, then 38, was charged with first-degree murder. According to court documents, Ms Weathers bought a .45-calibre firearm from an Odessa pawnshop. She returned home and approached her father, who was sitting at a computer in the dining room.
Ms Weathers fired once through the back of the chair. Tex Delana attempted to get away but collapsed at the back door.
Authorities said Ms Weathers then called police and said she couldn't shoot herself.
"I was going to after I did it," she told the dispatcher, according to the charging document. "I couldn't bring myself to do it. I know I need to go to jail, but I am trying to kill myself first."
Janet Delana explained Wednesday how she and her husband began noticing alarming changes about seven years ago in their daughter's behaviour as she grew suspicious and paranoid.
"She thought she had a chip inside her and she was being monitored," Ms Delana said.
Ms Weathers began to exhibit a high level of paranoia in 2006 and was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2011 by a physician evaluating her for Medicaid eligibility, according to the lawsuit. In 2011, Social Security Administration staff members determined Ms Weathers was unable to work because of her mental issues, and Ms Weathers began receiving benefits.
Ms Delana said Wednesday that she was worried her daughter soon would be receiving a Social Security check and might try to buy a gun at the Odessa store. About a month before, according to the lawsuit, Ms Weathers had contemplated committing suicide with a different gun purchased from the store.
Her husband got rid of that gun, Ms Delana said.
Both federal and Missouri firearms laws recognise the dangers of selling guns to the dangerously mentally ill, according to the lawsuit.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-gun-stor ... z2vnyhAORn
