(courtesy washingtonpost.com)

A man accused of killing his ex-girlfriend in a Target parking lot in Montgomery County used an antique-style, black-powder pistol,” washingtonpost.com reports. Why? “Because his record as a sex offender barred him from buying a regular firearm, according to the prosecutor.” The Post refrains from calling for a ban on black powder pistol on-line sales. For now. And says nothing about introducing background checks for black powder pistol purchases. Yet. Just the facts M’am . . .

The suspect, Donald W. Bricker, 27, of Hagerstown, ordered the handgun online, and it arrived in the mail Monday morning, Feinstein said. He practiced at least one shot at home, and later on Monday drove to Germantown to meet with his ex-girlfriend, Mariam “Shadé” Adebayo, Feinstein said.

Adebayo, 24, had agreed to meet with him in a public place, her friends and officials said.

Bricker started fighting with Adebayo inside her car, prompting Adebayo to get out and try to get away. Bricker shot her twice, fled in his pickup truck and was captured a short time later, police said.

Bricker copped to the crime, perhaps motivated by video surveillance recordings of the killing. His lawyer asked for a bail bond that “conceivably” allows Bricker to be released pending further proceedings. The Post piece closes with this  ironic bit, presented in the true spirit of dark newsroom humor and sardonic excess.

Dillon said that Bricker recently had stopped two college classes because he was getting so much work doing home improvement.

“It’s something that he really likes,” Dillon said. “He likes working with his hands and then seeing the finished results.”

[h/t AS]

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39 COMMENTS

    • Apparently it’s now OK to call it “black” powder. That makes it a hate crime. Where will this racial insensitivity end?

  2. Following the shooting in South Carolina yesterday and now this news of antique guns being used in a homicide, you wait for the executive orders to start coming down.

    Normally I’d be the voice of reason, but with the ITAR regs being proposed and BO only 18 months away, he’s gonna do things you won’t believe. After all, what does he have to lose?

  3. Shot her twice? With a black-powder gun? And still had time to get away. So much for magazine-capacity limitations. And idiots like Shannon Watts keep insisting that we rely on the police to protect us.

    • Wasn’t thinking, could have been a cap-and-ball revolver I guess. OTOH–either way he still had all the time he needed before the cops could make the scene and “protect” the victim.

  4. Wait a minute … TWICE with a black-powder gun?!! Are you kiddin’ me? I guess the anti-gunner still wouldn’t be safe if the 2nd Amendment only pertained to muskets after all.

  5. “Likes to work with his hands and see the finished results”. Does this mean he stayed long enough to admire the body he just shot, using his hands to shoot the BP pistol?

  6. “He likes working with his hands and then seeing the finished results.”

    In the context of this murder, that may be the most unintentionally funny thing that a lawyer has said since — forever. Anyway, if he likes working with is hands so much, he would have knifed her.

  7. Yes, he liked working with his hands. He liked measuring gun powder. Seating patches. Ramming the bullet into the chamber. And all the while he was muttering, “My precious.”

    Bail, my ass. Throw the keys away.

  8. If he couldn’t get a black powder gun, he would have used a knife, a pipe, a brick, etc. Cain had no gun but still managed to murder his brother.

  9. Soon bad guys will be throwing sticks of dynamite, using poison dart blow guns, spear chucking and whatever.

    • I wouldn’t doubt it. After all, there was a case a couple of years ago, in Utah, I think, where a young man murdered his college professor father with a crossbow. Just stormed into class and fired.

      If people will go so far as to murder others with a single shot long arm dating to at least the 5th century B.C., it really puts into perspective the futility of every gun grabbing initiative from magazine capacity limits to 3D printer manufacturing.

  10. Why doesn’t someone make a “modern” black powder revolver? Double-action and reloaded by breaking open the action like a top-break revolver and dropping in a fresh, loaded and primed cylinder.

    • It’s called the Colt 1873 SAA, which originally (and still for the purists) used black powder cartridges. Remingtons too, and even S&W made black powder cartridge revolvers. The original runs of SSAAs can still be fired today, but only with black powder–the frame was redesigned when the switch as made to smokeless right before the turn of the (last) century. Modern colts or replicas shoot either.

      Or you could go the Remington 1858 route, which has an easily replaceable cylinder. Eastwood uses one in Pale Rider. Has a belt pouch with two spare cylinders.

      BUT, and it is a very big BUT, cartridge revolvers for which ammunition is still readily available are NOT considered exempt C&Rs, and BGC are required for purchases from dealers. Which is why this guy bought a cap and ball pistol and not an SAA. (And if price was a factor, the cap and ball pistols run about $300 or so, much less than a cartridge pistol.)

    • I remember seeing a post on thefirearmsblog.com about a product in the UK similar to what you’re describing. They use those Rock Island arms .38 special revolvers, but they leave out the cylinders and a few small parts, replace the cylinders to something akin to a cap and ball’s cylinder, then the new cylinder just slides on and off the cylinder rod for reloading a fresh cylinder. I wish they would sell them i the USA, but I’ve got my double action Starr cap an’ ball reproduction to hold me over until then.

  11. Buying a black powder pistol because he couldn’t get a modern gun with his record? Sounds like a whole lot of premeditation goin’ on. Murder One?

  13. Media is silent on this. Guess #BlackLives don’t matter to Bloomy and Shannon. Racists

  14. No innocent person should die that way, but I can only shake my head that a convicted sex offender had an ex girlfriend, but the nicest guys I know can’t get a date to save their life.

  15. Our founding fathers didn’t intend for the 2A to protect these new fangled non hunting assault weapons.

  16. Been out of the black powder gun scene for awhile, but the powder used to be regulated and I think a form sort of similar to 4473 had to be filed out. Don;t know what is going on now.

    • There is some regulation as to how much you can store (5 lbs, as I recall) and shipping is strictly regulated. But there are no forms for purchase of a couple of bottles from your favorite LGS. Then again, BP is harder to find than the new substitutes, but if you need “true black,” it is relatively easy to make your own.

    • “They’ll get my bardiche when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.”

      Be careful, the current administration might just take you up on that offer…

  18. I shoot a lot of the Holy Black…4 Remingtons and 17 spare cylinders and two .45 Long Colt Conversion cylinders. LOL

    When you consider that probably millions have been killed by black powder guns over the centuries, they are not toys or some odd-ball antique. They are just as deadly as any of the modern made guns. The 1847 Walker Colt was the most powerful commercially manufactured repeating handgun from 1847 until the introduction of the .357 Magnum in 1935, having a muzzle energy nearly exactly the same as a 4-inch-barreled (10 cm) handgun firing a .357 Magnum.

  19. Waiting for Maryland to come up with a law to force black powder handguns to require a HQL and background check to purchase.

  20. He was probably just confused by the Target store logo. You can bet his mother still says “my baby diddendoo’nuffin wrong”.

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