Meleanie Hain, 31, a mother of three and latter-day national symbol of the gun-rights movement for her insistence on openly carrying a loaded Glock handgun, was unarmed in her kitchen and idly Web-chatting with a family friend.

She was, her mother said, about to leave her husband, after the latest episode of their fight-and-reconciliation cycle had ended poorly, and Scott Hain, 33, was displeased.

"Scott was not a person to be by himself," said Jenny Stanley of Lancaster, Meleanie Hain's mother.

Outside the webcam's view, Scott Hain picked up a gun. By then, the chat partner, in another Pennsylvania county, had let his attention wander over to the television.

Then, at what police would say later was 6:07 p.m., the online feed erupted with a gunshot and a scream, and the friend saw Scott Hain walk into view. He raised a handgun and fired several times, and the friend called 911.

By the time police arrived, Meleanie Hain was dead in the kitchen, and Scott Hain had used a shotgun to commit suicide in an upstairs bedroom.

Their three children, a neighbor said, had run from the house shouting, "Daddy shot Mommy!"

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The murder-suicide happened more than a year after Meleanie Hain became a national figure for carrying her Glock handgun to her 5-year-old daughter's preschool soccer game.

She had told interviewers that she feared unforeseen dangers in her quiet, rural community, about 80 miles west of Philadelphia and not far from Lancaster's Amish communities.

Instead, the danger arose from her decaying marriage, despite its veneer of domesticity. On Wednesday, Scott Hain had mowed the yard before going inside and leveling his gun at his wife.

According to statistics compiled by the Brady Campaign from academic studies and law enforcement sources, gun violence is a key element of domestic violence. Over half of family murders are caused by firearms, and firearm assaults are more than 12 times as likely to result in death than violence without guns involved.

Women take the brunt of domestic violence when guns are involved. In 2002, more than 4,400 women were killed with handguns. Almost one-third of these were killed by current or former intimate partners. It also appears that the presence of a firearm in the family home makes it far more likely that a domestic violence incident will end in gun violence and homicide.

In fact, it is about 83 times more likely that a hand-gun will be used against a woman by a current or former intimate partner than used by the woman in self-defense during a violent attack by that partner.

Meanwhile proponents of guns have spent millions to oppose laws that would require lengthier and more thorough background checks or that would prohibit possession of or selling a firearm to a person under a restraining order by his or her current or former intimate partner for abuse. They also oppose laws that would require the police to temporarily remove guns from the scene of domestic violence.