Following this text is a copy of an L.A. Times article on Monday about a suicide at the Agoura Hills Target Range.  Tonight at 6-7pm PDT on radio station KFI, 640 AM in Los Angeles, the suicide victim's family will be on for 1/2 hour followed by Jim Davis, owner of the range, for 1/2 hour.  Listen in and support Jim.  He operates a fine range and is a good guy.  There have been four suicides at the range since 1995, while in the same time period at two local hotels there have been 13 and 16 suicides.  Jim is tough on everyone, but you can't stop someone who is determined from committing a crime or suicide.

Can someone post this to subguns.com?  For some reason my IP (Compuserve) has been blocked by Tom Bowers.  I'm trying to correct that, but they need to support Jim Davis also.
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Monday, May 28, 2001 |  Print this story
Gun Rental Restrictions Urged
Safety: Couple's mentally ill son killed himself at a shooting range.
Owners say they do all they can to prevent tragedies.
By NOAKI SCHWARTZ, Times Staff Writer
    On a summer morning last July, a pale and shaking Bobby Prince told
his parents he was going for cigarettes. He climbed into his white
Bronco and headed south, past the stream he caught bass in as a boy, and
rolled onto the Ventura Freeway. Five miles down the road, he stopped
under the ticking clock tower at the Agoura Hills Target Range.
    Prince, 31, marked a single passage in his Bible and tucked it into
the console. Then he walked into the range, rented a shotgun and killed
himself. The clock's hands rested at 10:10 a.m. It was the fourth
suicide at the range since 1995.
    The tragedy could have been prevented, his parents say, if the owner
had conducted a background check and learned that their eldest son was a
paranoid-schizophrenic who had been arrested several times. Although his
arrest record and illness prevented him from buying a gun, he could rent
one for $10.
    Range owner Jim Davis insists that Prince was a trusted, regular
customer who never gave any indication of instability. "He seemed fine,"
Davis said.
    Suicides with rented guns have plagued shooting ranges across the
nation for years, although there are no comprehensive statistics. In Los
Angeles County, at least 12 suicides have been reported at ranges since
1995. The problem has caused many range proprietors to insist that
customers either use their own licensed guns or, if they rent, to bring
a companion. Others have stopped renting guns.
    Prince's parents, Rosemary and Robert, say those safeguards aren't
enough. They want the Agoura Hills City Council to require ranges to
conduct background checks on first-time renters through the state
Department of Justice. The council is expected to take up the matter
within the next few weeks. The Princes say they then want to take their
fight to the county Board of Supervisors and even the Legislature.
    "We don't want to close the range down and aren't suggesting that
guns don't have a place in the world," said Rosemary Prince, 58, at her
Westlake Village home.
    "But would you take a 2-year-old child and let them make decisions
for themselves?," said Robert Prince, 60. "Ill people are no different .
. . they don't think they're mentally ill."

Part 2 follows.

Excuse me, but what kept Mr. Prince from driving his white Bronco head on into a minivan full of people?  Why are his parents not responsible for letting a suicidal (adult!) man drive a 4,000 lb. death machine?

At least this guy killed only himself.  He didn't take 12 others with him.

I CANNOT figure out why the METHOD of suicide makes a bit of difference.  If someone WANTS to die, they'll figure out a way.  Neither Jim Davis nor Prince's family are "responsible" for his death - he is.

I bought two AR15 lowers through Jim.  I agree....he is a nice guy, but tough when he needs to be.  Its sad that his business is being attacked by liberal dogs. I'll tune-in and listen.

Suicide is self defense

Exactly, KBaker!!
That must be on the John and Ken show. I'll try to pick it up. I get better reception in the winter.

I think Ken and Bob were very neutral and that Jim Davis presented his case extremely well.  Jim Davis is old school, and if anyone is careful about who shoots it is Jim.  The parents of course blame Jim instead of their son.  Anyone is responsible except the person who does the deed these days.  The parents want a background check to be mandatory to rent a gun at a range so you can trust that a person won't go postal on you.  Sorry mom and dad, you have to keep an eye on everyone at a range to prevent accidents, background check or not, just like you have to assume every driver on the road is dangerous.

The general Agoura/Westlake Village/Thousand Oaks populace these days is yuppie Republicans who are more anti-gun than the other residents, the yuppie Democrats.  Mom and dad live on Westlake Island, so it's no wonder that they knew everything about their son's life while knowing nothing at the same time.  

I couldn't pick it up. Not even at their web site.
I'm hoping for a rerun.
I used to live in that area way back when.
Kanan Road. Paramount Ranch, Triunfo Cyn Road.

Gimme a break, this guy is 31 yrs old, how about jumping in front of a speeding Metroline train(this is a high speed commuter train for L.A.).  There are a lot of them.  Are medical records public in Calif to enable the Calif. DOJ to do the background check?  This is very scarry beyond the 2nd Amend issues.

MDS, if you haven't been to Agoura for a long time you wouldn't recognize it.  Traffic nightmares and an "upscale" Costco, with the inventory aimed at the yupsters.  Remember when they had real road-racing at Paramount Ranch?

Warlord, I'll ask my sister about that (the psychiatric/medical records) since she's a psychiatrist in Silicon Valley.  Her point-of-view will be warped because she's a true Berkely liberal from the pre-hippie days, anti-gun to almost the max, along with her anti-gun husband who spent seven years in the Navy as a CB officer and never fired a gun, yet he can buy a handgun without taking the test because of his honorable discharge.  Not that they aren't good people, just misguided.  She did say one time that the psychological profiles of criminals and cops are very similar.

Lets run DOJ checks for renting cars, buying knives, buying 3-buck-a-gallon gas, every employee.  Hell, let's have the DOJ run a background check for anyone on anyone anytime we want one.  

Frankly, I think Jim Davis should sue the parents for failing to take care of their child and causing him extreme stress.

NO, thanks to commie legislation all psychiatric records are sealed and can only be opened by a judge. Therefore, Psychos are left to their own recognizance to tell a gun store that they are mentally unstable. That's one big loophole in all of the Brady type laws. And that's also how people like John Hinkley Jr. and the New York City subway shooter passed a "15" day background check and got their guns.

It's strange that he was mentally disturbed but concerned about saving a buck or two by renting instead of buying? Maybe he didn't want to be alone?

Never knew they had car races at Paramount Ranch. All that was there then was Dee Cooper, movie sets, horses and the Renaissance fair came later. Is Whizzin's gone? I was last through there in '73.

MDS,

Surprisingly, Whizzin's is still there.  South of the 101 and east of Kanan they've restricted development, and the Agoura Target Range is right by Whizzin's.  One of the busiest intersections in the state is Kanan and the 101 on the north side of the freeway.  One interesting thing is that at the ATR you can shoot .50cal!  Jim said the design of the backstop is so good that the bullets come out undamaged from the .50.  It's at least good that if you want to break-in a barrel you can do it there instead of driving 40 miles to the Angeles range.  And if you drive into the valley these days it's a rush-hour jam from Agoura to Woodland Hills most of the day.  I've lived in the area since the mid-50s, and back then you could go shooting at a range in Woodland Hills, and even in the '70s you could shoot trap/skeet at the Calabasas Park Gun Club.  Also, Agoura isn't really Agoura anymore.  The part in L.A. County is now Agoura Hills, The Ventura County part is Agoura, and a section of that broke off and is called Oak Park.  It is now a souless, identityless part of the L.A. sprawl that runs from Camarillo to San Clemente.

Nothing better than riding a sport bike heading south on Potero Road from the Oxnard Plain starting at Camirillo State Hospital, going through Hidden Valley,
(note, on TV shows, commercials and in films whenever you see a shot of cars driving down a really cool looking tree lined two lane road with horse ranches and expensive houses and the entire road is lined with a three rail 2 X 6 white fence then this is where it is)
up through Westlake to Decker Canyon Rd (23), then Mulholland to Kanen Dune to Cornell Road (Mulholland Hwy) to the Rock Store!
[img]http://www.drduc.com/images/RockStoregif.gif[/img]