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[Min]

Gun's don't kill people. Bullets kill people.

Restrict ammunition. A killer with a gun can't do much with one bullet.

Either that, or do it the texas way, give everyone a gun and a box of ammo. A lunatic isn't gunna go shooting up the local mall if everyone has a pistol on their hip. Your not gunna break into grannies house if you know she sleeps with a pistol under her pillow and a shotgun by her bed.

Min
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Custom means it didn't come from a box.
1980 n/a with EDIS and Megasquirt II Injection. 7 different colors and counting.

[joecitizennn]

Nobody cares. Cows with guns!

[Tigger937]

Anyone care to speculate the reason behind the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, The Right to Keep and Bear Arms??? This needs to be considered BEFORE even considering a ban on firearms as a resolution to problems like this.
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1981 931 (Concours)
1982 931 (Daily Driver)

"Think outside the box"

[!tom]

Of course this has the potential to start a massive flame war, but the topic has already been breached. Perhaps what is important is understanding the intent behind the 2nd amendment, rather than taking it out of context as the people who want to walk around town with a bazooka in hand tend to do.

"The British are Coming" means something entirely different now than it did when the 2nd amendment was written.
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78 924 NA
5-lug

[joecitizennn]

cows with guns

[Rasta Monsta]

This and abortion, two arguments that will never end.

Historical context supports the militia interpretation, Joe, FWIW. However, you have certainly provided a fine summary of NRA bullshit.



There is one thing that is hard for anyone to argue. . .the flood of firearms in the US is unique in the entire world. . .we have created an environment in which there are so goddamn many handguns it is simply no longer possible to regulate them.

The real conundrum though, is this. . .while I hate the gun related problems that exist in the US, I wouldn't want them taken away. Why? Because I don't trust criminals? Umm, NO. Because I don't trust the goddamn government. THAT is why the framers of the constitution wanted their muskets.
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Toofah King Bad

• WeiBe (1987 924S 2.5t) - 931 S3

[Tigger937]

Direct from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution and I quote:

Federalist Noah Webster wrote:
Tyranny is the exercise of some power over a man, which is not warranted by law, or necessary for the public safety. A people can never be deprived of their liberties, while they retain in their own hands, a power sufficient to any other power in the state.

One example given by Webster of a "power" that the people could resist was that of a standing army:
Another source of power in government is a military force. But this, to be efficient, must be superior to any force that exists among the people, or which they can command; for otherwise this force would be annihilated, on the first exercise of acts of oppression. Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. (end quote)

In short, the Second Amendment exists to enable the people to protect themselves from a tyrannical form of government. Now I ask, do we really want to ban firearms altogether in an effort to protect ourselves from the relatively few crazies out there who would just find other means to carry out their senseless acts? The consequences would be far worse.

The writers of the constitution felt so strongly about this, that they got up and left in search of their own 'New World'. This time around there won't be that luxury. We can't afford to make that same mistake again.
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1981 931 (Concours)
1982 931 (Daily Driver)

"Think outside the box"

[sandgroper]

[quote="joecitizennn"]The US contains Hollywood. I think our culture has gone down the toilet alot faster than other countries.[/quote

And dont forget the republicans who love to kill in the name of god,as long as its not aborting one of our own.

[D Hook]

A few updates and random thoughts:

The shooter was in a mall that is clearly marked at the entrance as a "gun free zone".

Nebraska has a concealed carry law recently passed. You are allowed to carry a concealed weapon if you take a gun safety class, clear the back ground checks and pass an exam. When buying a hand gun, I believe there is a waiting period. None for buying a long rifle. Since the mall is marked as a "gun free zone", no one would be allowed to carry a concealed hand gun into the mall to defend themselves. The only armed person in there was the shooter. Mall security is not allowed firearms. The mall usually also has a couple off duty police officers around who are armed.

Today, the mall has hired a local security company to provide armed security for the rest of the holiday shopping season. (A friend of mine is on the detail and is a part time LEO in a nearby town.)

The weapon used was stolen earlier from the shooter's father's house. The woman who saw the gun in his possesion earlier thought it was too old and rusty to work.

The shooter was a hunter and no stranger to firearms and it would not be out of place to see him with a rifle. However, it seems strange that she knew he was depressed and was afraid he would commit suicide and she wouldn't bother to be sure her house was clear of weapons and he would be allowed to possess a firearm at all, working or not.

A student was interviewed on the radio this morning and said she was threatened by a friend of the shooter when she made comments on a website about the shooter being a nutcase. The shooter apparently has several friends who are defending his actions and saying he was "just having a bad week".

Here's a screen shot of the shooters website just before he did it:


There is a fear that these friends of his will try to out do him by shooting up another mall or a school.

His parents divorced when he was three. He was living with a friend's family and the house he was at was visited a few times in the past by the police for various reasons.

Stupidest question heard at last night's news conference with the Chief of Police:
"DO YOU KNOW WHEN THE MALL WILL BE REOPENED?"

Don't get me started on the local media.

I can't wait for the tv stations to start their promotions using this tragedy in commercials, telling us how fast they were to get the story out before the competition. Truly disgusting.
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'80 924 n/a SOLD

[D Hook]

We'll never know for sure if this could've been stopped if there would have been a customer in the vicinity who was armed.

But I believe an armed society is a polite society.

The shooter entered the store unarmed first, looked around the place then left and returned with the rifle wrapped up in a sweatshirt. The door he entered is three feet away from the elevator that took him to the third floor so no one noticed him. According to people I've talked to, he unwrapped it on the elevator and when the door opened up on the third floor he stepped out and started shooting.

Disarming society is not the answer. Everyone in that mall was unarmed. It is NOT the people who bother to follow the law regarding firearms that are the problem.
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'80 924 n/a SOLD

[D Hook]

Omaha Gunman Was Released in 2006 After Four Years in Treatment Centers and Group Homes



By ANNA JO BRATTON and NATE JENKINS, Associated Press Writers

OMAHA, Neb. (Associated Press) -- The young man who killed eight people and committed suicide in a shooting rampage at a department store spent four years in a series of treatment centers, group homes and foster care after threatening to kill his stepmother in 2002.

Finally, in August 2006, social workers, the courts and his father all agreed: It was time for Robert Hawkins to be released _ nine months before he turned 19 and would have been required to leave anyway.

The group homes and treatment centers were for youths with substance abuse, mental or behavioral problems.

Altogether, the state spent about $265,000 on Hawkins, officials said.

On Thursday, while some of those who knew Hawkins called the massacre Wednesday at a busy Omaha mall unexpected, not everyone was surprised.

"He should have gotten help, but I think he needed someone to help him and needed someone to be there when in the past he's said he wanted to kill himself," said Karissa Fox, who said she knew Hawkins through a friend. "Someone should have listened to him."

Todd Landry, state director of children and family services, said court records do not show precisely why Hawkins was released. But he said that if Hawkins should not have been set free, someone would have raised a red flag.

After reviewing surveillance tape, a suicide note and Hawkins' last conversations with those close to him, police said they don't know _ and may never know _ exactly why Hawkins went to the Von Maur store at Westroads Mall and shot more than a dozen people.

But he clearly planned ahead, walking through the store, exiting, then returning a few minutes later with a gun concealed in a balled-up sweat shirt he was carrying, authorities said.

Debora Maruca-Kovac, a woman who with her husband took Hawkins into their home because he had no other place to live, told the Omaha World-Herald that the night before the shooting, Hawkins and her sons showed her a semiautomatic rifle. She said she thought the gun looked too old to work.

Police believe Hawkins was using that AK-47 when he stormed off a third-floor elevator at the store and started shooting.

Police said they have found no connections between the 19-year-old and the six employees and two shoppers he killed.

"The shooting victims were randomly selected," as was the location of the shooting, Omaha Police Chief Thomas Warren said.

Acquaintances said that Hawkins was a drug user and that he had a history of depression. In 2005 and 2006, according to court records, he underwent psychiatric evaluations, the reasons for which Landry would not disclose, citing privacy rules.

In May 2002, he was sent to a treatment center in Waynesville, Mo., after threatening his stepmother. Four months later, a Nebraska court decided Hawkins' problems were serious enough that he should be under state supervision and made him a ward of the state.

He went through a series of institutions in Nebraska as he progressed through the system: months at a treatment center and group home in Omaha in 2003; time in a foster care program and treatment center in 2004 and 2005; then a felony drug-possession charge later in 2005. Landry said the court records do not identify the drug.

The drug charge was eventually dropped, but he was jailed in 2006 for not performing community service as required.

On Aug. 21, 2006, he was released from state custody.

Under state law, Landry said, wards are released when all sides _ parents, courts, social workers _ agree it is time for them to go. Once Hawkins was set free, he was entirely on his own. He was no longer under state supervision, and was not released into anyone's custody.

"When our role is ended, we try to step out," said Chris Peterson, director of the state Department of Health and Human Services.

About an hour before the shootings, Hawkins called Maruca-Kovac and told her he had written a suicide note, Maruca-Kovac said. In the note, Hawkins wrote that he was "sorry for everything" and would not be a burden on his family anymore. More ominously, he wrote: "Now I'll be famous."

"He had said how much he loved his family and all his friends and how he was sorry he was a burden to everybody and his whole life he was a piece of (expletive) and now he'll be famous," Maruca-Kovac said on CBS' "The Early Show," describing the note. "I was fearful that he was going to try to commit suicide, but I had no idea that he would involve so many other families."

Bellevue police on Thursday arrested a 17-year-old friend of Hawkins who they said threatened to kill a teenage girl. The girl had made remarks about Hawkins that offended his friend, Chief John Stacey said.

The teen was being held in a juvenile detention center on suspicion of making terroristic threats, Stacey said. Police found a rifle and two shotguns at the teen's house, weapons he had access to, the chief said.

The shoppers that Hawkins killed were Gary Scharf, 48, of Lincoln, and John McDonald, 65, of Council Bluffs, Iowa. The employees killed were Angie Schuster, 36; Maggie Webb, 24; Janet Jorgensen, 66; Diane Trent, 53; Gary Joy, 56; and Beverly Flynn, 47, all of Omaha.

___

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Nate Jenkins in Lincoln, Neb., and Oskar Garcia in Omaha.
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'80 924 n/a SOLD

[tuurbo]

If we spent that trillion $USD of Iraq war dollars on good health care (including mental health care) we wouldn't be having this discussion.

[Rasta Monsta]

Nah, US politicians would rather invest in war and prisons than health and education. MUCH easier to skim.
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Toofah King Bad

• WeiBe (1987 924S 2.5t) - 931 S3

[Stu2j]

[endwrench]