Omaha NE Mall Shooting Spree

[Mirage]

Words cannot describe how angry and sad this makes me...

Robert A. Hawkins is a 19 year old who had nothing better to do with his life than go to a mall and shoot a bunch of people at a popular mall in Omaha Nebraska. He killed himself as well. I couldn't feel less sorry for him, but my heart goes out to the innocent victims of his spree. He certainly chose a loser way to go out.

Police: Nine killed in shooting at Omaha mall, including gunman - CNN.com

FOXNews.com - Gunman Kills Eight, Then Kills Himself, at Omaha Shopping Mall - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News

If you are going to kill yourself kill yourself. Taking other people out with you is the ultimate loser thing to do. According to CNN he had a rifle.

Many of you know I used to live in Omaha so this hits home for me. I've been in that store and used to shop at the Westroads Mall shopping center all the time.

So now people will want to talk about gun laws? Here in Colorado it's legal to carry concealed weapons if you have a permit. In Nebraska you cannot have concealed weapons. I am all for people having concealed guns and here's why. If somebody near this kid had been carrying a concealed gun, this guy wouldn't know that. As quickly as he had fired his first few shots he would have found himself dead on the floor, stopped in his tracks.

This also makes me wonder why malls don't hire armed guards. Everybody is afraid to put guns in all of the places they need to be nowadays and sidestepping the issue isn't going to fix anything.

This really gets to me though because there is nothing those shoppers could have done. Nobody feels right carrying a gun in plain sight, so in states where concealed weapons are illegal, odds are most people just don't carry them.

My heart goes out to the friends and family of the victims in this tragedy.

 

[Dragon]

It's sad that something like this happened. I was reading an article about this and many shoppers were huddled in a dressing room together all frightened and ran out only when the cops told them too. Now 8 families are going to grieve this holiday season. Something was bothering this guy and he didn't have to take his frustration out on innocent people.

 

[dDave]

yeah he killed 9 people and injured 5, people like this make me so mad, especially since there is almost no way to stop it when they are willing to kill themselves in the process to escape the punishment, the only real solution would be to hire armed guards or to let people carry guns, of course we have no idea what would happen if people were allowed to carry guns maybe even more of these incidents would happen and more people would be killed, if they don't let people carry guns then I'm all for armed guards, people would think twice about doing this if they knew that there was a guy ready to shoot them.

 

[Hi_Im_Tim]

the only real solution would be to hire armed guards or to let people carry guns, of course we have no idea what would happen if people were allowed to carry guns maybe even more of these incidents would happen and more people would be killed,

People are allowed to carry guns, I am not sure if they are allowed to have concealed weapons or not. Is there a law that prohibits concealed weapons in Nebraska?

This is really sad. I don't like suicide, but if you are going to commit suicide fine, but there is no reason to take other people down with you.

 

[Mirage]

I forgot that Omaha had actually passed a bill recently to allow people to carry concealed weapons if they had a permit. The issue with this mall is that they have signs that say no guns allowed.

There will probably be a lawsuit against them because of this. Nobody can prove if somebody would have been in the right place at the right time with a gun, however, but it does make for an interesting argument, and a needed one.

Unless they install metal detectors at malls, and make them as difficult to get into as airports (which will never happen), I think people have the right to have a weapon on their person. There are lunatics out there like this kid. Did he worry about bringing a gun into the "no guns allowed" mall? No.

It's the innocent people who obey the rules and found themselves helpless.

She told the Omaha World-Herald that the night before the shooting, Hawkins and her sons showed her an SKS semiautomatic Russian military rifle — the same type used in the shooting. She said she thought the gun belonged to a member of Hawkins' family. She said she didn't think much of it — the gun looked too old to work.

I don't know about you guys, but I had a 20 year old depressed guy living at my house and he showed me a gun that he owned he would be kicked straight out. This family he was living with should have done something as soon as he showed them the gun. I mean... red flag anyone? They were so stupid to let him stay there knowing full well he had a gun. Yes they knew because he showed them. I would have taken the gun and had it's ownership looked up. Chances are a 20 year old kid with no money didn't just go out and buy it. (And he didn't, he stole it from his uncle.)

 

[Dragon]

I was watching CBS news and they had more info about the guy. Apparently, he sent messages to his friends days before the shooting and his friends just ignored his call for help. If one of my friends say that they are going on a shooting rampage, I would report it to the cops right away whether or not they are joking.

The reports also said that the shooter was a high school drop out and couldn't find a job. He was a young guy and there was a chance for him to go get a GED so that he can go to college and get a decent job.

 

[AngelsPeak]

I was watching CBS news and they had more info about the guy. Apparently, he sent messages to his friends days before the shooting and his friends just ignored his call for help. If one of my friends say that they are going on a shooting rampage, I would report it to the cops right away whether or not they are joking.

The reports also said that the shooter was a high school drop out and couldn't find a job. He was a young guy and there was a chance for him to go get a GED so that he can go to college and get a decent job.

Right now, and until police are able to review his computer and phone messages, authorities are not stating that anyone knew his plans. He did call Deborah (house where he was staying) to basically let her know he was going to kill himself. What I don't understand is why she chose to go to work after calling his mom and the police? If someone staying with me called to say "goodbye" I'd be out scouring every place I thought he might be.
I also cannot believe she wasn't more concerned when he showed her the gun. She's now saying she assumed it would be used for hunting (how ironic is that phrase) which Hawkins and her sons did frequently. Personally, I think she's now saying that to cover her huge blunder in allowing him to bring the weapon into her home.
He did have a job at McDonalds which he was fired from that day for allegedly stealing $17 from the till.
This was an extremely troubled young man who should have remained in some sort of intense counseling program, instead he was let loose and look how that turned out?

 

[Mirage]

His suicide letters have been given to the media now.

FOXNews.com - Mall Gunman Suicide Note: 'I Just Snapped' - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News

And AngelsPeak, I agree with you about the fact that Deborah is trying to cover for her blunder. Who takes an AK-47 hunting? Here in the US we've all seen enough movies to know what military rifles look like, and what hunting rifles look like.

An AK-47 is a semi-automatic (or full auto) machine gun. It's use for killing other people and that is it's primary use.

 

[Doc]

Who takes an AK-47 hunting?

Just to clear something up (and no, I'm not defending that piece of shit), there are actually a good bit of collectors who like to use a slightly modified AK-47 it's tried and tested durability. I know several people who use a variation of the SKS (which, in rare cases, can be modified to be fully automatic) for hunting, also, and for similar reasons as people use the perfectly legal semi-auto versions of the Kalashnikov for hunting.

As for what he did, as I know I haven't addressed it (or even read most of the posts here), it was wrong. How else could someone put it? If he wanted to die so bad, he should have beat his own head off of a pavement or something and "go out as a man" as Maddox so eloquently put it.

As far as the factors leading up to it, his note said that his parents had "disowned" him and that he felt his friends saw him as a "piece of shit" and would see him as a "monster" now. He clearly was another confused kid that society chose to ignore until the situation escalated way too far and he felt the best course of action was to take out the "pieces of shit" around him that weren't accepting him.

 

[oxyMORON]

The guy was depressed, rejected, everything you could imagine that could go wrong with a person. I still don't see why he had to go kill other people. Oh wait, he said he wanted to be famous. That's right...=/