Gun therapy hits unexpected snag

[james_davis_nicoll]

[Chris Kyle] returned home to become a best-selling author and a mentor to other veterans, sometimes taking them shooting at a gun range near his Texas home as a kind of therapy to salve battlefield scars, friends said. One such veteran was Eddie Ray Routh, a 25-year-old Marine who had served tours in Iraq and Haiti.

But on Saturday, far from a war zone, Mr. Routh turned on Mr. Kyle, 38, and a second man, Chad Littlefield, 35, shortly after they arrived at an exclusive shooting range near Glen Rose, Tex., about 50 miles southwest of Fort Worth, law enforcement authorities said Sunday. The officials said that for reasons that were still unclear, Mr. Routh shot and killed both men with a semiautomatic handgun before fleeing in a pickup truck belonging to Mr. Kyle.

Comments

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

The problem is, they were experienced shooters who knew to hide when the bullets started flying in the wrong places. If they had been inexperienced school teachers or principals, I'm sure they would have fired at him.

I'm boggled. We license drivers and accidents still occur at the training locations, and cars are only incidentally deadly. Even if something like gun therapy works eighty per cent of the time (and that's arguable), you're still going to run into the other twenty per cent, with usually tragic results.

My condolences to the families of Mr. Kyle and Mr. Littlefield.