Florida's largest gun dealer bans gun rentals in wake of suicides

[onehandle]

Source: Orlando Sentinel

Shoot Straight, Florida's largest independent gun-shop chain, has stopped renting guns to prevent its eight Florida ranges from becoming suicide parlors.

Khaled Akkawi, founder of the Apopka-based chain, made the decision last month after the latest suicides at one his gun ranges.

"We've had enough," Akkawi said Friday. "They've been increasing real fast and the one common denominator — everyone is done with a rental gun."

Shoot Straight joins a growing number of gun ranges across Central Florida that have restricted or prohibited gun rentals to stem the deaths.


Read more: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/os-gun-rentals-stopped-shoot-straight-20140108,0,1684171.story

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Guns are insignificantly less handy now.

[KamaAina]

1. Gun rentals?!

[AtheistCrusader]

2. Quite normal.

People who do not own firearms go to gun ranges all the time. Would you purchase a ~$600 thing up front without knowing if it's something you want to do at all?

Sometimes they borrow from friends/family, sometimes they rent.

An interesting move by the range/company owner. Rentals are big business. VERY big.

[PeoViejo]

3. Rented to use on the Range

A lot of folks like to try before they buy, or, for some reason, don't own a gun.

[Recursion]

11. Many shooting ranges do it

It's a way to train on a gun without having to shell out the money for it (eg, to get the practice required for a permit).

[Redfairen]

4. He was probably afraid George Zimmerman would show up looking for a rental. *

[msongs]

5. 2A violation, call the NRA asap nt

[rurallib]

6. probsbly because they don't get paid and have trouble

getting the gun back

[tblue]

7. A dead renter can't return it.

You're so right. It's a money issue. The industry couldn't care less about deaths from the products it sells. It's all about the moolah.

[hack89]

8. You can't take a rented gun home

the gun never leaves the premises of the gun range.

[awoke_in_2003]

16. That is true...

but wouldn't cops confiscate the gun?

[hack89]

18. Not permanently.

Once the investigation is over they would return it.

[awoke_in_2003]

19. Ok. Thanks. nt

[JohnnyRingo]

15. If you read the article...

..you'll see that people do this so the family won't have the mess to clean up.

I admit I never saw this coming, but it makes great sense now. I doubt there's much future in renting pistols now unless there's some kind of background check, but even then, how does one weed out that despondent potential suicide?

I see they tried one way to screen them out. They don't rent now to white middle aged men who are alone. Interesting if they call foul on profiling.

[Recursion]

12. Well, I'd imagine the cops take it

The suicides happen on the range (you don't get to leave with a rental gun; you just go shoot it on the range).

[zbdent]

9. I will gladly pay you Tuesday for an AR-17 today ...

[ailsagirl]

10. Insanity

[JohnnyRingo]

13. There's a depressing job.

If I were writing copy for conservatives, I'd blame it on lowered emissions standards. Now it takes all day to off yourself in the family sedan. Might as well take a kindle.

That sounds totally crazy, but only because Rush Limbaugh hasn't thought of it yet.

[DeSwiss]

14. Maybe he should give renters blanks.

- K&R

[TheMightyFavog]

17. Hey, blanks can be lethal, too.

Ask Brandon Lee.

[Rhythm]

20. It would be more accurate to ask Jon Erik Hexum...

The gun Hexum used had strictly a blank in the chamber... no foreign object in the barrel.
Hexum spun the cylinder as though playing 'Russian roulette'... Unbeknownst to him, the chamber containing the single blank in the gun came up, and the ensuing pressure from the blank going off with the barrel-opening against his temple killed him.

Brandon Lee was killed when a foreign object (the head of a squib bullet) was shot out of the revolver fired by fellow actor Michael Massey... no one had checked the barrel or chambers for foreign materials before loading it with blanks, so the blank going off sent the squib-slug out of the gun just as if it was a regular bullet.
Had it been just a blank in that gun, Brandon Lee would still be alive.

[valerief]

21. If people had living wage jobs, they might not be killing themselves at all. nt

[underpants]

22. Bowling alley stops renting shoes to prevent Friday night DUI's

Wow "suicide parlor"

[underpants]

23. $5,000 per white male (from another source)

"We don't rent to any white male Florida resident who comes in alone," said owner John Harvey. "In the past 30 years, we've never had a suicide that wasn't a white male Florida resident who came in alone. They don't want to mess up their families' homes, so they do it here."

In addition to the tragedy of each death and distress for gun range employees and customers present when they happen, Harvey said each suicide costs about $US5,000 ($5,600) in lost business and expenses required to reopen.

http://www.news.com.au/world/us-gun-dealer-shoot-straight-bans-rentals-after-suicide-spike/story-fndir2ev-1226799781653

[packman]

24. If I was a first-timer shooter

at a gun range and the person next to me shot themselves in the head, I do believe it would dampen my desire to own and shoot a gun.

[hollowdweller]

25. I've never thought the renting thing was a good idea.

If you want to go shooting meet some other friends who have guns and have them take you. If the person loaning you the gun knows you way less chance a suicidal person would get one.

[Duckhunter935]

26. most of the time

It is to test out a potential purchase of a firearm. Do you buy a car without driving it first?

[democratisphere]

27. More to the point: Why are so many people trying to kill themselves?

Maybe if we focused more on things like mental health support for troops with the likes of PTSD and citizens that can not even earn enough income to exist, we would not be hearing about such horrific events.

[RadleyJ]

28. The ones that come in and only want to buy one bullet

should be a tip-off.

[godevil10]

29. I would hope that you

have to have a background check for renting a gun. Anyone know about this?

[reACTIONary]

31. I've rented a gun, at a gun range, in MD...

... and there were no background checks or other such impediments at all. While this may not make sense, renting a gun at a gun range is, by its nature, a constrained, managed, regulated activity. You are basically under close observation and confined to the immediate area the whole time.

The gun range I visited had a very strict protocol for bringing guns into the store (which I did not do, since I don't own any and was renting), for entering and exiting the range, for how you handle the guns while in the shooting area, etc. These measures, in my opinion, are far more effective in preventing incidents on the range than a background check on the renter would be. Especially in the case of a suicide risk, since there isn't much that a background check can do for that situation.

[ManiacJoe]

32. No need for a background check on rentals.

You don't get to take the gun home. You just get to use it temporarily in the next room.

[reACTIONary]

30. Link to LA Times Article...

... the link in OP requires sign up.

http://www.latimes.com/topic/os-gun-rentals-stopped-shoot-straight-20140108,0,5524741.story#axzz2q82WpOYY

[ManiacJoe]

33. Due to two suicides a few years ago,

in the Seattle-Bellevue area it is now standard practice that the ranges will only rent guns to people who either (1) bring a friend who will theoretically prevent the suicide, or (2) being their own gun which means they don't need to rent one to kill themselves.