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Going out with a bang, US Style


Guest Fran

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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."

 

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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

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