Man who accidentally shot self, wife in church while discussing church shootings will keep his carry permit

Matt Lakin | Knoxville (Tenn.) News Sentinel

Show Caption Hide Caption What Drives Gun Ownership? The results of a joint study conducted by the University of Groningen and the University of Maryland were published on Thursday in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. For the first time, researchers have developed a psychological process model for defensive gun ownership, which considers both the reasoning and the consequences of owning a gun for protection and self-defense. Researchers found the motivation to own a handgun was about fear of crime but also about a more general sense of threat from "the belief that the world is an unpredictable and dangerous place and that society is at the brink of collapse."

TELLICO PLAINS, Tenn. — An 81-year-old man who accidentally shot his wife and himself at church while showing off his gun won't face charges or lose his carry permit, police said Friday.

Wayne Reid shot himself in the hand and his 80-year-old wife, Kathy, through the abdomen around 1 p.m. ET Thursday while showing off his Ruger pistol to a fellow parishioner at First United Methodist Church.

"As far as I know, he'll get to keep it," police Chief Russ Parks said of the firearm. "No one who was in the church is wishing to press charges, and we in the police department think they've suffered enough."

Tellico Plains is a community of fewer than 1,000 residents on the edge of the Smoky Mountains about 50 miles southwest of Knoxville, Tenn.

The couple had stayed to clean up after a pre-Thanksgiving lunch when someone brought up the Nov. 5 deadly church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas.

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Reid drew his Ruger and boasted that he carried the gun everywhere, police said. He removed the magazine, cleared the chamber and passed it around before reloading, chambering another round and reholstering.

Someone else walked up late and asked for a look. This time, Reid forgot to check the chamber — and pulled the trigger to prove it wasn't loaded, the chief said.

The bullet sliced open his palm, struck his wife on the left side, came out the right side of her abdomen and passed through her right forearm before ricocheting off the wall and landing under her wheelchair, according to a police report.

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Neither suffered serious injuries, and the couple remained Friday at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, the chief said. They turned down a request for an interview.

The Tennessee Department of Safety, which issues and oversees carry permits statewide, suspends or revokes a permit only in arrests or convictions for violent crimes, spokesman Wesley Moster said.

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