Fun With Guns: Couples Edition
Earlier this month a man left a loaded .380-caliber Ruger in the bathroom at the Egg Harbor Fun Park somedamnwhere in Wisconsin. His name is Gerald Hitchler and he’s 76 years old.
Okay, that’s just kinda routine now and probably wouldn’t even make Fun with Guns. They just called him to come get his gun.
A sheriff’s incident report noted the gun was loaded with seven rounds of ammunition. The serial number was traced to the owner, and the report indicated Gerald was shocked when he was called and learned they had the weapon.
You have my gun? Never missed it. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you!
Well, that hit a sheriff’s deputy as odd. So after a short investigation it was discovered that …
Gerald’s wife, Susan Hitchler, also left a semiautomatic loaded handgun in a stall of the women’s restroom on March 19 at Elmbrook Church in Brookfield.
In Susan’s case, charges of endangering safety were filed but were dismissed because it happened during the women’s Bible study meeting and although girls from the adjoining school could have entered the restroom, there was no evidence that any of them did. You know, like holes in the wall or a whole mess of blood. Evidence that a child found your gun.
So the newspaper contacted the Hitchlers to see if they’ve become The Gun Fairies or something.
Gerald was contacted by phone and asked if he realized the gun was missing and he responded, “not really.”
He said the incident was “funny, accidental” and “not a big deal.”
“It’s like you lost a pet,” he said on Monday. “This is a very minor issue. Nothing happened. Nobody was hurt.”
Yeah, it’s exactly like you lost your pet. If your pet is grizzly bear.
And they are coming to a church or fun park near you! Have a nice Labor Day, ya hear?
Egg Harbor is little summer resort community on the Door County peninsula separating Lake Michigan and Green Bay, a couple hours drive north of Milwaukee. The biggest crime wave in Egg Harbor is raccoons tipping over trash cans after dark, so why these two semi-senile goofballs feel they need to tote around concealed handguns surpasses all understanding. Thanks, Mr. And Mrs. Hitchler, for making visits to your lovely state less safe for the rest of us.
1I can’t imagine how pathetic their lives must be if they can’t go to church or an amusement park without such great fear that they need to arm themselves.
The need to take a gun to church seems pathological to me. It is not a fear that is based on reasonable expectation of harm, it is just paranoia. And that’s sad.
2Both should have been charged with criminal negligence and prevented from ever owning another gun. The fact that “nobody was hurt” doesn’t change the fact that they are irresponsible and present a danger to society. Neither senility nor dementia excuse them, but in fact are all the more reason that they should not have access to firearms.
3How do you leave a gun in the restroom? Were these two senile old people just swinging their guns around their fingers as they walked into the facilities? They didn’t have any holsters, purse or pockets they can put their guns in? I guess both of them just stick their guns in the waistband of their pants and then forget they even have them.
Also, how do you lose a pet for days and not know it?
4Frankly, both of them flunked the competency test, a test of their own making. Look, we have a lot of fuss happening when the law or a family member try to take the car keys away from Grandpa cuz he just can’t remember how to drive safely. In our family Granpa still had the keys but his damn WWII jeep just wouldn’t start and he found out that it would cost a damn fortune to get it up and going cuz parts were just not that available. Hell, it was Grandma who stole the distributor and hid it in the attic. No kiddin’! This is a straight story!
5PS If this old couple can’t remember they even have a weapon let alone where they last left it, it might be time for a family member to “lose” it for them. It would make me feel safer and I live hundreds of miles away!
6Love all the comments and especially Maggie’s Grandpa’s jeep story.
But Ralph’s final comment certainly covers a lot of territory:
“The need to take a gun to church seems pathological to me. It is not a fear that is based on reasonable expectation of harm, it is just paranoia. And that’s sad.”
Yes, it is indeed sad!!
7I’m spending the weekend at or near home. Nobody I know has a gun of any kind (except for a hunter in Maryland who keeps his rifles in a locked gun vault).
Fools like these two yokels want to make DC “open carry.” The DC Police Chief wonders how she and her troops are supposed to protect all the big shots in town if that happens.
‘Tis a puzzlement.
8Everyone seems to be giving these people the incompetence defense. These people may be a bit elderly but they know very well what they are doing. Fun parks, church bathrooms? Give me a break. I think Mr. and Mrs. Hitchler are stealth serial killers. I think they get joy out of the possibility of someone (children) getting their hands on weapons and dying. These creeps know very well what they are doing.
You have to ask yourself how they accidentally left weapons.
9You’d think they’d be holstered or in a purse. Hmmmmmm?
Ralph and Marcia,
10Unfortunately here in East Teabaggistanessee, we have rational fears that necessitate the packing of heat for self-preservation in the Good Lord’s house. A nut job Lush Slimeball fan who hated liberals because among other things his food stamps were ’bout to get canceled shot up a church one day with a shotgun he pulled from a guitar case. The bad guy with a gun rampage was stopped by good guys with rudimentary wrestling skills, but a .380 ruger shore woulda helped a whole bunch more.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/28/jim-d-adkisson-charged-in_n_115281.html
Sanity. We are in dire need of some sanity.
11I dunno, it sounds to me like they are leaving guns in restrooms SPECIFICALLY so kids can find them.
12Fine examples of responsible gun ownership, aren’t they? Seriously, there is something very wrong with these two.
13I think they’re leaving guns in restrooms on purpose, to spread the notion that having loose guns around is just fine. Or maybe because they’ve committed another crime with them (just might use one of those fancy magnetic radar-like look into the ground things in their backyard!) and figure leaving their guns in restrooms might get them in someone else’s hands. Or…they have plenty of other guns at home, so not having those guns is no problem.
What I cannot get over is the extreme laxness of the law and law enforcement when it comes to deadly weapons.
14hannity@10, I disagree; a good guy with a gun might as easily have led to more people getting killed, which is never a good option. (The two who died might well have been done for before the good guys got their guns out.) I say hooray for the guys who wrestled the bad guy down *without* shooting; they’re the real heroes here.
15The last time I lost a pet, I noticed it was missing within a very short period of time. I peppered the neighborhood with “Lost Cat” signs.
I lived in Door County south of Egg Harbor for a time. As UmptyDump pointed out, raccoons in the trash cans is about the worst thing that can happen. Oh, they did have a restaurant with a Scandinavian style grass roof and a goat on top of it for a time. But the only way that would be a danger is if some fool accidentally shot the goat and it fell on you.
16Actually, if we are going by Teavangelical-mega-mondo-church membership as noted, these folks live in or near comfy Brookfield, near Milwaukee, 95% white, less than 1% black, median income north of $80k, in the heart of FOX-watching, Koch-sucking, Jim A-Rating-From-The-NRA Sensenbrenner country.
So, unless the Zombiepocalypse starts, a .380 Ruger is… no wait… I am wrong. These guys aren’t in FEAR of the Zombiepocalypse…
They ARE the Zombiepocalypse!
17Let’s say just for the sake of the argument, that I am a bad guy intent on killing people in a church or airport or mall. As my co-conspirators and I plan this execution, I tell them, under no circumstances are they to reveal their firearms until armed citizens or the police respond to my shooting rampage. Only then will they to use their firearms. To kill everyone else armed.
See the problem these open carry folk don’t understand that police officers do is that when police, the supposed good guys, go into a site in which there is an active shooter, they don’t usually know how many shooters or what they look like.
18Rick knows that like many small Wisconsin towns, Egg Harbor is a quaint little lakeside drinking village with a fishing problem. About the worst that happens is down at the local American Legion hall after the Friday Night Fish Boil, when somebody who’s carrying staggers out of the Legion barroom, overserved with Wisconsin brewskis and belligerent.
19Leave the gun, take the cannoli.
20ROTFL, Rhea wins the internets!
21Haven’t heard a peep out of the NRA in a while. Maybe they are getting fed up with defending these “responsible gun owners.” Not likely but a guy can dream. These tools are the bread and butter of the NRA. Hannity is herb tarlek says,these people you mentioned get their ideas from right wing nut jobs about liberals ruining everything. Libs didn’t take the truckers food stamps away. Wingnuts did,so you know they are egging these people to commit violence.
22Today I visited my local package (liquor) store and there was a sign on the front door: “NO GUNS ALLOWED.”
Later I passed a nearby Methodist church with a big banner in front reading: “My house is a house of prayer. No guns allowed.”
I think this sentiment is catching on.
23And here we have yet another reason why I have no interest in going to church or women’s Bible study — those women scare me.
24hannity is herb tarlek, you have my sympathy, but if I lived in fear of a maniac attacking everywhere I go, I’d move to some place with fewer maniacs. (And I live in Waco, TX) We are each more likely to get hit by a truck than to be attacked by a gun-wielding maniac in a church. So carrying a gun to church is not exactly a proportional response, nor it it based on a rational fear.
I’m not a particularly brave person but I am sufficiently courageous to face ordinary life without armaments. People who feel the need to carry guns lack even that minimal courage. And I will always pity them.
You can’t expect to solve the problem of too many guns by increasing the number of guns. Making sure that everyone has a murder weapon will not decrease the number of murders.
25djw,
I disagree too. I was being facetious or sarcastic, one.
e.p. onion,
the squalk radio staticians rally the teabaggers here ’bouts to eliminate government spending in the Tennessee River Valley where TVA, federal programs in Oak Ridge, federal highway funds, the University of Tennessee and all the related private contractors provide right at 70% of the jobs and lucrative careers to a population that overwhelmingly votes teapublican’t for politicians who strive daily to harm their self-interests.
Ralph,
26Nothing advertises fear and weakness more than packing heat around for everyone else to see. We have a state rep here who after authoring and assuring passage of an infamous Guns in Bars bill, got charged with DUI after leaving a bar with a loaded pistol jammed in between his drivers seat and center console.
http://www.nashvillescene.com/pitw/archives/2011/10/12/guns-in-bars-sponsor-rep-curry-todd-caught-drunk-with-loaded-gun
Is their pee-habits so damn secret they need to go armed to the head???
27And who is putting Uzis into the hands of 9-year-olds?
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/08/28/year-old-killing-instructor-puts-spotlight-gun-tourism/gBqtOmH1YOUTQZopeN2baP/story.html
Well, the instructor is dead, so I guess he won’t be the one putting Uzis into 9 year old hands anymore.
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