Well-known gun-rights advocate is found dead of self-inflicted gunshot wound

Robert Eugene Owens, the man found shot to death at a street intersection on Monday, was an editor of the website bearingarms.com and well-known on Facebook and Twitter as an advocate for Second Amendment issues.

Friends and colleagues of Owens, 46, mourned him in social media posts and on Bearing Arms and other conservative websites.

“It is with heavy hearts that we regret to inform our readers that our friend and Townhall colleague Bob Owens, editor of Bearing Arms, has passed away,” Ed Morrissey, a senior editor of the conservative website hotair.com, wrote in a post on Tuesday morning.

Officials said when the body was first discovered that it wasn’t clear how Owens died, but noted that a gun was found nearby. The town announced Tuesday afternoon that Owens died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Owens was about a block from his Southern Oaks subdivision home, which colleagues said he shared with his wife, Christine, and two daughters.

Owens’ last post on his Facebook page was Monday morning.

“In the end, it turns out I’m not strong. ... I’m sorry,” the post said.

On Sunday, Owens had posted about an upcoming deadline for a book he was writing.

“Three days left and 10,000 more words to finish ‘The Deplorables Guide to Guns.’ I got this,” he wrote.

Bearing Arms, HotAir and several other websites are part of a company called Townhall Media Group, which is associated with the Christian conservative broadcasting and online media company Salem Media Group.

Owens’ “defense of Second Amendment rights included criticism of abuses of them, and Bob became a go-to guy on the legal issues on various incidents. That didn’t always delight his readers, but it always informed them — and me,” Morrissey wrote.

The Bearing Arms site states that in addition to believing that all Americans have a right to own firearms, “that citizens choosing to exercise their right of arms owe a duty to society to master their arms and use them in a judicious and responsible manner.”

“Bob had a great, if sometimes sardonic, sense of humor, and his passion was hard to miss. His excellence and dedication [were] impossible to miss,” Morrissey’s post said.

Jenn Jacques, Owens’ co-editor at Bearing Arms, posted a notice on the site Tuesday. She writes, “It is with deep regret and profound sorrow that I must share with you the following:

“Yesterday morning, just before 11 a.m., Bob Owens’ life came to a tragic end.”

Jacques added, “In the end, all that matters is he that will be sorely missed, and the truth is that we will never know what truly happened.”

A GoFundMe page was set up Tuesday and described as a “family and college fund” for Owens’ wife and children.

It had raised $7,000 by mid-morning Tuesday.

No funeral arrangements had been made public Tuesday.

This story was originally published May 9, 2017 at 11:22 AM with the headline "Well-known gun-rights advocate is found dead of self-inflicted gunshot wound."