Remember Lebanon, Pa., gun-toting soccer mom Meleanie Hain, whom we wrote about in December? Hain had developed the habit of attending her young daughter’s soccer games strapped with a loaded Glock, and was suing the Lebanon County Sheriff’s Dept. for revoking her license to carry and conceal a handgun. We thought that the story was interesting in a wingnut sort of way — I believe I made a joke about her kid always getting a majority of the orange slices — but no one’s laughing now.

Disturbing word comes today that Hain was shot and killed in her kitchen by her husband on Wednesday in a crime that was, of all things, apparently captured on video chat as she was talking with a friend. A horrific turn of events that kind of brings Friday to an abrupt stop.

I’m not going to get into a whole thing about gun control here. I’m ill-equipped for such a weighty debate involving psychology and technology; I have enough trouble trying to decide on the setting for the toaster. But it’s not much of a leap, sadly, to look at a photo like the one above, and then discover that the subject has met some grisly death due to a firearm. It just isn’t. Read more…

In this troubled economy, companies often have to merge to stay afloat. And if this news from the PATRIOT-NEWS is any indication, SNL’s two best sartorial success stories–Bad Idea Jeans and Mom Jeans–have done just that. Mom’s Bad Idea this time around has been to spruce up youth soccer by introducing mortal danger, as one woman fights for her right to openly carry a firearm at her daughter’s games.

(”GOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLL!!!!!!!!!!”)

This is where things get weird, though. Really weird. The local sheriff had responded to the woman’s decision by taking away her concealed weapon permit. That’s despite the fact that openly carrying a firearm is legal for nearly everybody in Pennsylvania, according to OPENCARRY.ORG. So when a judge returned the mother’s right to conceal her handgun, she responded, quite naturally, by asking for a million dollars to go with that.

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