Yet Another Shooting Spree

This time in an Omaha shopping mall.

A gunman opened fire Wednesday at mall in Omaha, Neb., killing eight people and wounding five others before committing suicide, police said.

Terrified holiday shoppers and workers at the Westroads Mall ran for cover, hiding in store dressing rooms, as shots ran out.

"There are a total of 14 people injured. Nine of those people are deceased," police Sgt. Teresa Negron told reporters.

She said the dead included the lone shooter, a man who suffered an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

The NRA types are certain to be busy pasting their screeds explaining how "guns don't kill people" in response to this massacre right at this very moment, so I might as well get my own two cents in too: even if one accepts the premise that the second amendment permits liberal* private ownership of firearms, it is surely not too much to also admit that the environment fostered by such rights is a lot more conducive to spree shootings than one in which not just anyone can avail himself** of a semiautomatic rifle to work out his inner turmoil on innocent strangers; to pretend that there are no tradeoffs to be made with permitting widespread firearms ownership is just as intellectually dishonest as the stance that the death penalty has no deterrent effect on would-be murderers. Spree shootings will be more common where weapons which can be used to carry them out are easier to get, just as surely as the quick, certain execution of convicted killers will make many a criminal think twice about pulling off a 1-8-7.

*No one seems to have the guts to claim it protects the right to own napalm, cluster bombs, tanks and nuclear cruise missiles, at least not with a straight face ...

**There's only ever been one female shooter as far as I know.

Comments

[gene berman]

Sylvia Seegrist. Springfield Mall, Springfield, PA--circa 1985.

[Ross]

Brenda Ann Spencer is another one, I'd have thought that she was the most notorious female spree killer on account of her "I don't like Mondays" explanation for the massacre.

The correlation between gun legality and murder rate has never seemed particularly strong to me, but spree murders are a very obvious exception to that.

Of course high capacity firearms were the implement of choice, but methinkst you've overlooked the underlying common denominator tying together many if not all of these recent mass shootings.

While a state ward, he was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, mood disorder, oppositional defiant disorder and parent-child relations problems.

Robert Hawkins, the 19 year old who killed himself and eight other people with an assault rifle last night in Omaha, Nebraska had a history of treatment with psychiatric drugs for depression and ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and was on prozac according to press reports.

Of course the headlines will once again focus on how evil and dangerous guns are, how the second amendment should be reevaluated and will once again ignore the fact that this young man was subject to dangerous brain altering chemicals for a number of years prior to this tragic incident.

[Abiola Lapite]

What a lot of rubbish! Ignoring the reality that the "dangerous brain altering chemicals" you rant against are actually making a difference for the better in the lives of millions of people, it's absurd to pretend that medication is a more universal bond tying together spree shooters than the obvious one of their *having easy access to guns*: without access to firearms, no amount of Prozac or ADHD medication ingestion will enable one to shoot dead dozens of strangers.

It would be one thing if you were making the argument that one should need a clean record of mental health to buy a gun - and even that argument would be of dubious merit, as not everyone full of murderous rage goes looking for medical help - but the proposition that there'd be no spree killings if everyone just stopped taking psychiatric drugs is breathtaking in its speciousness.