Conor [McBride] went back in the house, locked the door, went to his father's closet, pulled his shotgun down from a shelf, unlocked it, went to another room where the ammunition was kept and loaded the gun. He sat down in the living room, put the gun under his chin and his finger on the trigger.

"I just felt so frustrated, helpless and angry," Conor says. "I was just so sick and tired of fighting. I wanted us to work out just because, I mean, I loved the girl. I still do. I was so torn -- this was the girl that just said she wants me to die. I'm sick of the fighting. I just want to die, and yet I love her, and if I kill myself she might do something to herself."

All these thoughts were running through his head when Ann [Grosmaire] started banging on the door. Conor stood up, placed the weapon on a table and let her in. They went into his bedroom, and a few minutes later Conor went to get her something to drink. When he returned, he found her lying on the couch, breathing in a way that seemed to indicate distress. Her mysterious behavior made him so angry that he started screaming: "Let me help you! Tell me what's wrong!" Conor says that he would frequently fall into this "wrathful anger," and on this day "there was so much anger, and I kept snapping." Ann started sobbing, saying that Conor didn't care and that she wanted to die. "At this point, I just lost it," Conor says. He left the room and got the gun. Ann started to follow him, but she may have stumbled or tripped, because when Conor returned with the gun, she was on her knees halfway between the couch and the door. Conor was frustrated, exhausted and angry and "not thinking straight at all."

He pointed the gun at her, thinking, he says, that he could "scare her" so that "maybe she would snap out of it."

"Is this what you want?" he yelled. "Do you want to die?"

"No, don't!" Ann held out her hand. Conor fired. [...]

When it was Michael McBride's turn to speak, sorrow overtook him and he told the group that if he had ever thought his shotgun would have harmed another person, he never would have kept it. Kate Grosmaire didn't bring it up at the conference, but she says she has thought a lot about that gun. "If that gun had not been in the house, our daughter would be alive," she told me.

The Robinson-Patman Act, passed in 1937, imposes an excise tax of 10 to 11 percent (depending on the item) on guns, ammunition, hunting equipment and fishing equipment.  This money is collected by the federal government and then returned to the states for use as grants to fund improving wildlife habitat, purchasing properties for public hunting (public hunting lands) and fishing (e.g., boat launches), and creating and maintaining shooting ranges which are open to the public (either government-owned or privately owned but open to the public).  This program has made millions, if not billions of dollars available for these purposes.  Most of the wildlife people now see and enjoy - regardless of whether they are hunters/anglers or not - has a home and a chance of existence because of this program.  And, non-game wildlife benefits (and exists) because habitat improvement and preservation benefits non-game species as well as game species.

As to the shooting ranges, providing a safe place for people to shoot is really important for a lot of reasons, most of which are quite obvious.  One could go off to a gravel pit, set up a few targets, and shoot them, with all the attendant safety, good neighbor and related issues, or one could create a shooting range designed, built and operated to recognized safety standards.  As a society, we decided the latter would be far preferable.  That this range will be professionally operated is only a plus.

All anyone ever seems to say is that we need better mental health coverage and treatment.  We need that anyway, don't we?  I mean, take guns out of the equation - it's still way too hard for people who need mental health care and treatment to get it.

There are too many guns.  Period.  And there is too little oversight with regard to the buying, selling and licensing of guns.

Investigators with the Cecil County Sheriff's Office say [ten-year-old Aaliyah] Boyer was watching fireworks with relatives outside their home in Elkton around midnight New Years when she was struck on the top of her head by a bullet.

Neighbors told deputies that they heard the celebratory gunfire going off when they were outside looking at the fireworks.