Omaha Mall Massacre

Once again, a crazed lone gunman slaughters innocents, and once again nobody who is there has the ability to stop him.



9 Dead, Including Gunman, at Omaha Mall
Shooter, 19, Left Behind Suicide Note

Nine people were found dead -- including the gunman -- and five others injured during an afternoon shooting spree inside a busy Omaha shopping mall during the height of the holiday shopping season, police said.

The article included the following comments:

Hawkins opened fire with an automatic rifle and later died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was found on the third-floor customer service counter of the Von Maur department store.

"Automatic Rifle"? I doubt it. The Associated Press maintains its standard for accuracy, which is to say none at all. There are no reports that an 'automatic rifle' has been used here. "Semi-Automatic" -- maybe, but we're still waiting for definitive information.

One witness told MSNBC that the shooter shot victims indiscriminately and even shot a teddy bear.

Kevin Kleine, 29, of Omaha, a shopper, was there with her 4-year-old daughter. She said she hid in a dressing room with four other shoppers and an employee, The Associated Press reported.

"My knees rocked. I didn't know what to do, so I just ran with everybody else," Kleine told the AP.

Some witnesses reported seeing a man shot in the head. "I just came back from lunch and was standing around getting ready to go back to work … All of a sudden I heard bang, bang, bang and thought it was someone shooting fireworks," said a witness at the scene.

"I heard some more shots and we all just ran into rooms to hide. We didn't know what was going to happen.. [A co-worker] saw the shooter shoot someone in the head."

Varying reports put the number of shots fired between 10 and 50.

A woman who answered a call by the AP at the Old Navy store said 20 to 30 customers were huddled with employees in a back storeroom.

"All we know was people were running and screaming down the hallway by Von Maur saying there was a shooting, and then they locked us down," said the woman, who said her name was Heidi.

Some of the early reports are dubious, such as citing a (female) identified as "Kevin Kleine". The always biased news-source AP refers to the shooting of "a teddy bear" for color. This may be fact, but it doesn't confirm any implied supposition that the shooter was 'a sniper' who deliberately targeted a toy.

Radio reports more believably describe a shooter who leaned over the third-floor balcony and cut loose with a number of (aimed or un-aimed?) shots in the direction of a Christmas Shopping Season crowd, some of which hit people and some of which hit nothing of particular importance ... details added to lend color to the story.

I listened to the Lars Larson radio commentary on my drive home from work. This locally hosted (Oregon), nationally hosted conservative radio talk show emphasized an important point:

What if there was no cultural onus on Concealed Handgun Carry across the nation, and what if there were CHL licensees present at the upper-class Von Maur Department store today. Would they have been able and willing to engage this Urban Terrorist? Even a single shot fired at him would have distracted him, at least; at best, it would have hit him and rendered him unable to continue his predation upon Christmas-shopping innocents.

To paraphrase Larson:

You know, because I have discussed this on the show before, that I have a Concealed Handgun license and I carry a handgun. People ask me: why do you want to carry a handgun in a church, in a school, in a shopping mall? It's because this is exactly the kind of places where this kind of thing may happen. A crazy with a gun may show up anywhere, and places where guns are forbidden are the best place, in their mind, to carry out this kind of attack.

[ED: Because I was unable to take notes, and because a transcript of the show is not immediately available, I can't quote from the radio show. If/when precise quotes are available I will use them.]

I think Larson is on to something here.

Although Nebraska has enacted (March 30, 2006) Concealed Carry laws thanks to Sen. Jeanne Combs of Milligan, this law (as is true in any state) doesn't necessarily permit Concealed Carry in EVERY public (or private) place in Nebraska.

It may be significant that "... Nebraska’s bill is different ... [because it may] allow cities to ban concealed weapons. Lincoln Mayor Coleen Seng and Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey wrote letters to the Legislature ... expressing opposition to the bill." [ED: Emphasis added]

Whatever laws and local restrictions may apply, it seems clear that either nobody at the Von Maur department store HAD a gun to engage the shooter, or else those who did were too intimidated to do so, or they weren't in a position to use their personal defense weapon.

The result, and the consequences were, that (cited to date) 9 people were killed, 5 people were wounded, and the slaughter continued until the shooter voluntarily discontinued the killing by the simple expedient by turning his gun on himself.

There is confusion over what kind of gun he had. At this point we just don't know, due to the unreliable and incomplete reports from the Main Stream Media. If it was a handgun the MSM would certainly have said so. The reports to date refer to the gun only as an "automatic rifle", which is non-specific and questionable, but definitely rules out usage of a handgun.

[Note: later reports describe the weapon as "an SKS semiautomatic Russian military rifle". This may be no more accurate, but it is certainly more specific.]

Another report, from MSNBC, suggests a motive for the murders. It's mundane, mercurial and probably mendacious (given that it is both early-times and MSNBC), but it may provide some motive:

OMAHA, Neb. - Robert Hawkins had been kicked out of his family’s house, had broken up with his girlfriend and was recently fired from his job at McDonald's, where he had been accused of stealing $17.

Hawkins called Debora Maruca-Kovac, the woman whose home he was living in, about 1 p.m. on Wednesday "very upset," telling her that he had left a note for her in his bedroom, she said.

She tried to get him to explain, but he hung up after telling her "I love you, and I’m sorry for any pain I’ve caused you," she told a local television station.

Maruca-Kovac found what the 20-year-old had left in the home: A suicide note, in which he said he was "going out in style," and that he'd never been anything in his life but after Wednesday he would be famous.

This describes another loser in life's crap-shoot, perhaps a self-made loser who habitually broke the rules of society in his egocentricity. When his self-image was so damaged by the consequences of his own actions, he took his final revenge on the society which rejected him in a final Berserker act of defiance.

Or, he was truly a victim of circumstance, a loner without the skills to succeed alone, a pawn of fate. When we try to understand the actions of the individual, we find ourself in a confusing maze of possibilities. We will never know, really, what drove this young man to a final act of desperation.

But we do know that this is not the first time this bit of street theater has played in a public market ... or school, or office building ... and it will certainly not be the last.

There is a facet of society which seeks to contain these random acts of violence by controlling the tools of violence. The Gun Control Lobby is tireless in its efforts, randomly successful in its intermediate goals, and completely ineffectual in the final analysis.

Gun control will not stop a despairing madman from vicious attack, especially the madman with the declared purpose of "going out in style". We should make an effort to forget the names of these pitiful beleaguered creatures if only to deny themselves the name the try so hard to make known.

Forgetting their names would be a far easier task than finding a true solution to this cancer in the breast of civilization, this madness of market mayhem. And again, we may never know how to foresee, or to forestall it.

The best we can hope is to minimize the damage.

The news reports describe herd-animal responses to a predator. "The sound of gunfire sent people fleeing in all directions while others hid in clothes racks and dressing rooms." " I didn't know what to do, so I just ran with everybody else ...".

It sounds like the scene from the movie "Jurassic Park" depicting a herd of herbivores running from a marauding T-Rex. We are uncomfortable in that image, but those who yesterday found themselves in the unwanted role of victims had few choices in the Fight or Flight scenario, and it's probable that their instinctive panic saved some lives, if in the most ignominious manner our nature provides.

Some people advocate turning ourselves into an Armed Society. There are some advantages to that. Science Fiction master Robert Heinlein postulates that "An Armed Society is a Polite Society". And there are others, perhaps a majority, to are even less comfortable with that image.

As long as we are unwilling to tolerate random massacre, we will search for the best alternatives. In doing so, we will doubtless sink to a compromise which offers little of either security or comfort, but one which requires the least personal effort. We will let someone else take the blame for the atrocities of the past, and we will allow them to push us still further into the herd mentality by attacking our few personal options. When we impose the responsibility for our safety on our lawmakers, they will respond by imposing their laws on us. Laws are not typically designed to enhance our freedoms; they restrict our freedoms.

Within days, not hours the Nebraska legislature will take action to curb their recently enacted "Right to Carry" act. If not the state legislature, at least the city of Omaha will propose draconian actions which, had they already been in place, would not have had much chance of preventing the massacre.

"When seconds count, the police are just minutes away." Laws won't stop this, police can't stop this. The only thing which DID stop the killing in Omaha was another killing ... the killer killed himself.

Would it have made a difference if an armed citizen had counter-attacked?

(*Click on image for full-size version*)
It made a huge difference in the market mayhem in Utah last February, when an off-duty policeman used his concealed carry weapon and engaged the shooter ... in a posted "Gun Free Zone". When the herd was in full flight, hiding behind glass display counters and weeping in fear, one brave man with a gun stopped the predation. Yes, he turned it from a 'slaughter' to a 'gun battle'. A single snub-nose .38 protected a hundred people long enough for armed police units to arrive ... those forces for justice (who "protect and serve") who were just minutes away.

Obviously, an Armed Society is not an acceptable solution. But a society which recognizes the value of personal defense, and which will not deprive the individual of the tools which are needed in the most vulnerable public areas, may find a way to curb the excesses of the losers and maniacs for which we have found no other defense.

The Gun Control Lobby will not readily accede to this solution. They will cry out against 'gun-battles in the mall', but the people in Omaha Von Maur department store would have been glad to have found themselves in the middle of a 'gun-battle' instead of the killing field which was their reality. At the least, even with the possibility of stopping a random bullet, nobody would have been deliberately targeting them.

UPDATE: Thursday, December 6, 2007

John Lott on Malls as "Gun-Free Zones".

Here's Lott's summation:

Despite the lack of news coverage, people are beginning to notice what research has shown for years: Multiple-victim public shootings keep occurring in places where guns already are banned. Forty states have broad right-to-carry laws, but even within these states it is the "gun-free zones," not other public places, where the attacks happen.

People know the list: Virginia Tech saw 32 murdered earlier this year; the Columbine High School shooting left 13 murdered in 1999; Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, had 23 who were fatally shot by a deranged man in 1991; and a McDonald's in Southern California had 21 people shot dead by an unemployed security guard in 1984.

All these attacks — indeed, all attacks involving more than a small number of people being killed — happened in gun-free zones.

In recent years, similar attacks have occurred across the world, including in Australia, France, Germany and Britain. Do all these countries lack enough gun-control laws? Hardly. The reverse is more accurate.

The law-abiding, not criminals, are obeying the rules. Disarming the victims simply means that the killers have less to fear. As Wednesday's attack demonstrated yet again, police are important, but they almost always arrive at the crime scene after the crime has occurred.

The longer it takes for someone to arrive on the scene with a gun, the more people who will be harmed by such an attack.

Most people understand that guns deter criminals. If a killer were stalking your family, would you feel safer putting a sign out front announcing, "This Home Is a Gun-Free Zone"? But that is what the Westroads Mall did.