Gun-toting soccer mom found shot dead with husband

And the fight for gun rights will be taken to another level.

* * * * *

LEBANON, Pa. (AP) — A mother of three who became a voice of the gun-rights movement when she openly carried a loaded pistol to her daughter’s soccer game was fatally shot along with her husband, a parole officer and former prison guard, in an apparent murder-suicide at their home.
Autopsies were planned today for Meleanie Hain, 31, and Scott Hain, 33, who were pronounced dead shortly after 8:30 p.m. Wednesday at their brick home about 80 miles west of Philadelphia.
The couple’s 10-year-old son and daughters ages 2 and 6 were home at the time, police said. The two older children ran outside and told neighbors that their father had shot their mother, neighbors said. The children are being cared for by neighbors and relatives.
Toys lay scattered across the corner lot Thursday in the tree-lined neighborhood where the family lived and where Meleanie ran a day care center. A car parked in the driveway bore a badge-shaped sticker that read “NRA law enforcement.”
Scott Hain had worked in Reading as a parole officer for the state Board of Probation and Parole since August 2008. He previously was a guard at the Camp Hill state prison, the state Corrections Department said.
Neighbor Mark Long told The Patriot-News in Harrisburg that Meleanie Hain had baby-sat for his 3-year-old son and that the couple had been having marital problems for about a week.
Neighbor Aileen Fortna, 51, told The Associated Press that her husband noticed the two older Hain children running past their house and crying. She said the children told another neighbor that “daddy shot mommy.”
Meleanie Hain always carried her holstered 9mm Glock pistol, even to the grocery store, and was holding a rifle while she talked to someone outside her house last week, Fortna said.
“I’m shocked at the whole thing,” Fortna said. “I’m surprised she didn’t defend herself.”
Lebanon remained tightlipped Thursday, with Chief Daniel Wright saying only that the case was classified as a “death investigation” and that no one outside the home, or any of the children, is suspected of killing the couple.
Mike Witmer, a 32-year-old maintenance technician who lives across the street and about 50 yards from the Hains, said he was unloading groceries when he heard a commotion at their house. Shortly afterward, police swarmed through the neighborhood and told him to go inside.
“I’m pretty sure what we heard was the bang of the gun. It was a weird sound,” he said, expressing concern for the children. “I hope they’re OK and they get through the hard times they’re in for the rest of their lives.”
“I’m a big hunter, and I support gun rights and I own guns,” he said. “I just think sometimes guns get into the hands of the wrong people and tragedies happen.”
Meleanie Hain made headlines after she attended her then 5-year-old daughter’s soccer game in a park on Sept. 11, 2008, with her Glock holstered on her hip in plain view, upsetting other parents.
The county sheriff, Michael DeLeo, revoked her gun-carrying permit nine days later.
Hain successfully appealed the permit revocation, although the judge who restored the permit questioned her judgment and said she had “scared the devil” out of people.
Hain sued DeLeo in federal court, alleging that he violated her constitutional rights and prosecuted her maliciously when he took the permit away. She said that because of his actions her baby-sitting service had suffered, her children had been harassed and she had been ostracized by her neighbors in Lebanon, which has about 25,000 residents.
DeLeo said at Hain’s appeal that he revoked her permit after fielding the parents’ complaints. He said he based his decision on a state law that prohibits certain gun permits from being given to people whose character and reputation make them a danger to public safety.
After Hain sued DeLeo, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which says it tries to reform the gun industry through sensible regulations, offered to defend him for free.
“It is a case that calls out for common sense,” Brady Center attorney Daniel Vice said then. “It’s ridiculous to bring a gun to a child’s soccer game.”
Neighbor Debbie Mise said she was saddened by the sight of police leading the family’s mastiff dog out of the house.
“When he came out, his poor head hung to the ground,” she said. “My heart went out to that dog.”

 

This gun-toting lunatic ran a day-care out of her home?
Who in their right mind would allow a woman who took a gun to her kid's soccer game to baby-sit their kid?

 

Did the story really end with that ridiculous dog quote?

Also, while I think guns have a place, a youth soccer match isn't it. Obviously.

 

Nor is a day-care center.

 

the dog was sad! have a heart.

 

Screw what the kids are going through? What about the dog??

 

You mean the gun-toting lunatic who happened to never have been in trouble with the law and from all reports seems to have been a good neighbor and good citizen and loving mother and didn't molest kids or beat them?

Yeah, I'd probably have let my kids go to that day care.

 

“When he came out, his poor head hung to the ground,” she said. “My heart went out to that dog.”

They shot the dog.

 

There is an issue of her gun being out in plain sight. My oldest kids early on went to day care where there was guns in the house, because the woman's husband was a juvenile corrections guard. She showed us where he kept it (he was often home during the day because of his schedule) -- locked, in a closet upstairs and far out of the reach of small hands. Not saying that a kid was going to yank the glock out of this woman's holster, but I've gotta know that the guns are 100 percent inaccessible to children.

As for this woman, I wonder whether she had a gun in her hand the moment she really needed it.

 

Mom died doing what she loved.

 

In all seriousness, politics and arguing aside, you're lying. If you're not, I have no idea what to say to you.

No parent in their right mind -- no matter how you feel about gun rights -- would drop their kids off at a house where you know a woman is so gun crazy that she carries a loaded firearm around with her at all times and is routinely seen carrying firearms of one variety or another. There's enough dangerous shit in the world to protect your kids from. You're not dropping one off somewhere where there's a terrible accident just waiting to happen.