More on Merced Pitchfork murders/Gun Locks/Vin Suprynowicz

Over the years there has been some debate on what exactly happened with the horrific killing of young daughters and son of the Carpenter family in Merced, California. The killings became known as the pitchfork murders. The incident was originally reported on by Vin Suprynowicz in the Las Vegas Review-Journal on September 24, 2000.

Fox News for example had this from the father, John Carpenter:

"Lott cited a Merced, Calif. family whose guns were put away because of the state's safe storage law. John Carpenter, who lost two children in an attack in 2000, said a gun would have stopped the man who broke into his home with a pitchfork. 'If a gun had been here, today I'd have at least a daughter alive,' Carpenter said."

I also talked to the children's grandfather Rev. John Hilton in person and participated in a radio interview with him where he made very similar statements to the father, though I don't have recordings of either discussion.

However, David Friedman was never convinced.

Well, now some comments from the father's parent's have now been found. It doesn't seem to line up exactly with what Suprynowicz wrote, but one thing is clear is that the children's parents and the grandparents on both sides of the family are convinced that gunlocks prevented the family from using guns defensively.

I am the paternal grandmother of the two children who were brutally murdered inside their rural Merced California home on August 23, 2000 by a stranger with a pitchfork. Instead of suing gun manufacturers, I am of the opinion it is our lawmakers who need to be sued. It was you who created the laws that kept my grandchildren from being able to defend themselves with any weapon greater than their bare hands. All of my son's children had been trained in the use of firearms but were unable to get to their Dad's weapon because of California State Law. . . .

See this also.