Guest Fran Posted December 6, 2007 Share Posted December 6, 2007 |||| Nine dead in Nebraska shooting OMAHA, Nebraska: A 19-year-old man killed eight people and then himself with a rifle at a busy mall in Omaha on Wednesday, sending terrified workers and Christmas shoppers scrambling for cover. Five people were wounded in the early afternoon rampage at the upscale Westroads Mall, two of them critically, according to hospital spokesmen. "It was horrible, just horrible," one woman told KETV, a local television station. The shooting was the latest in a series of mass killings that have shocked the United States, where gun ownership is widespread and the right to bear arms is a hotly contested constitutional issue. .... KETV identified the gunman as Robert Hawkins, 19, from Bellevue, Nebraska, who was living near Omaha in the community of Quail Creek. Hawkins wrote a suicide note talking about his desire to become famous, which his mother gave to police, KETV said. .... Hawkins had been in trouble at school and with the law, and recently lost a job at a McDonald's fast-food restaurant, KETV reported. "He wanted to go out like a star," said Andrew Bigler, who described himself as a friend of Hawkins. "He had a rough life. He was a good guy. I loved him." |||| It's really important to be important isn't it? In the US, with so many people who are, it's widely believed, unimportant, killing and being killed isn't that big a deal -- especially when killing someone makes you important. Warhol once said that in the future, everyone would have their 15 minutes of fame, and it seems if you drop out of school or can't hold down a job at Macdonalds, grabbing a gun and blasting away in a shopping mall or on a university campus is the way to go. I know people sometimes argue against easy access to gun ownership, but I'll have none of it. The 2nd Amendment makes it clear that US citizens should have the right to form militias to fight tyranny, even if, as is commonly the case nowadays, it's the tyranny of irrelevance -- the denial of that promise Warhol made all those years ago. We see people on Jerry Springer all the time, but how many really get the chance to make idiots of themselves in public? It's a buyers' market out there with everyone wanting their piece of the public space. People are dying to be on TV or You Tube, apparently. Really, one could argue that the right to shoot up a shopping mall or school is part of the 1st Amendment -- is there anything more important than the right to express yourself? Does anything really speak louder than a gun? Probably not. The US Government expresses itself with JDAMS and Cruise Missiles and ICBMs and nuclear submarines. The UK is renewing Trident. The case for expressing yourself, arms in hand, is clear. I know that some people will wring their hands about the senseless loss of life, but really, if you think about it, Robert Hawkins has done them a favour. Before he shot them, they were nobodies. Standing up there on the third floor, they would have seemed little bigger than ants to him, and in social terms, they were about as relevant. many of them would have been planning their own shootings, one has to imagine. As victims though not only their families but even casual acquaintances will remember them forever. Witnesses will get on to TV and pour out their tales of tragedy and their "if only I hadn't left work early stories" to a ravenous public. Then there are the funerals ... So give a cheer for the US right to bear arms and to murder for celebrity. Really, the right to go out with a bang is to die for. Fran Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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