Common Folk Using Common Sense

A high school dropout with a criminal past, 19-year-old Robert Hawkins walked into a local shopping mall yesterday and, perched on the third floor, began apparently randomly shooting innocent people. He ended the carnage by taking his own life.

Chief Thomas Warren of the Omaha Police Department called the shooting “premeditated,” but said it “appears to be very random and without provocation.” Nine people - five women and four men, including the shooter - died at the Westroads Mall.

Hawkins dropped out of Papillion-La Vista High School a couple of years ago, friends said. Recently, he had been arrested on suspicion of minor in possession of alcohol, had lost a job at McDonald’s and had broken up with a girlfriend. He was living in a Bellevue home with the family of some friends.

Before the shooting spree, Hawkins left a note in the home of his adopted family that said he was “sorry for everything” and would not be a burden on his family anymore. He also wrote, “Now I’ll be famous.” He apparently also left text and phone messages for several friends.

It’s still very early in the investigation, but here is what I’ve discovered:

• The weapon he used has been referred to as “an SKS semiautomatic Russian military rifle”, “SKS assault rifle”, and “AK-47 assault weapon”. The SKS is not an assault rifle because it cannot fire more than one shot per trigger pull. The last time the Russian military used an SKS was in the mid 1950s. The SKS only holds 10 rounds.
• The mall has a “no weapons” policy. Due to this law the only person that had a weapon was the criminal. There is no resistance in a “gun free” location.
• It took the police six minutes to arrive. Even at a slow one-round-per-second firing rate the criminal could have fired 360 shots before the police arrived.
• Since many will use this to promote the idea that we simply need “more laws”, consider that if it were illegal to murder people this would never have happened, right?
• Nebraska allows people to carry permitted concealed handguns, but it allows property owners, such as the Westroads Mall, to post signs banning permit holders from legally carrying guns on their property, and that such signs carry the full weight of law.
• 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.

Says John Lott:

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.

Robert Hawkins, Omaha, Westroads Mall, SKS, gun free, Nebraska

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