Omaha Mall Shooter's REAL Problem

Yesterday, December 5, 2007, eight people were murdered in an Omaha shopping mall. It started around 1:50 PM Central Standard Time, and the shooting ended about six to eight minutes later. In the aftermath, eight people lay dead. Eight people who were working, or doing Christmas or Hanukkah shopping, or were simply looking through the store. These eight people will not enjoy the Holiday season, and neither will their families. An additional five people are wounded, two of them critically.

Before anyone starts saying that "the news report said there were nine dead," consider that the eight dead I am referring to are the victims. The ninth fatality, the shooter, I couldn't care less about. He is the one responsible for this mess, and deserves no consideration whatsoever. The people who SHOULD get some consideration are the people in this young man's life who tried to turn him onto a right path, one that would NOT have led to the Westroads Mall Shootings.

Of course, the information coming out now about this man, whom I will NOT name (the media has named him and has made him 'famous,' though a more correct term would be 'infamous') because I see no reason to do so. The families who tried to help this man report that he had been dealing with depression and that he had lost his job and his girlfriend and had been kicked out of his house a year before. This information is going to get certain groups of people (so-called "liberals," for example) saying that he was "troubled." They may also say, "he was only nineteen and didn't know what to do?"

Let's face some cold, hard, truths here. 1. Eight people are dead because of this young man. 2. He got himself an SKS rifle, according to reports, picked a spot above most of the rest of the crowd, and picked people off. 3. He wrote in his note that he was "going out in style" and would be "famous." 4. He killed himself rather than face the law or face off with people who actually were ARMED and able to shoot back.

This cannot be laid at the feet of guns, because guns are inanimate objects and don't fire themselves. Further, if more people in the mall had had guns, this man would probably have killed fewer people, because he'd have been gunned down before he killed eight people. Nor can we lay the blame with parents. Let's face it, even the best of parenting does not prevent people from going off and planning something like this. Make no mistake about it, this was planned by the man. Someone snapping and going off to shoot people would not go through the trouble of choosing a specific location. They'd just start shooting as they go.

The overwhelming fact of this entire episode is that this man was just plain EVIL. Let's quit psychoanalyzing this, trying to find some "chemical imbalance" to clear this young man of being in his right mind. This young man was just plain old, dyed-in-the-wool, unequivocally EVIL. I know the concept of evil is one people tend not to apply to a whole lot these days, but it does most certainly apply here. Anyone who would get an "assault" rifle, go to a mall, pick a spot above the majority of shoppers and calmly shoot people one by one is, quite simply put, evil. I know someone is going to quote the Bible and say that we are all, in the sight of God, evil beings in need of salvation. I don't deny that, but I'm going by the generally and historically accepted human view of evil. This man fits both God's definition of evil and man's.

That is the fact of the Omaha Westroads Mall shootings. The perpetrator was an evil coward who shot himself only after killing eight people and injuring at least five more. He couldn't even stand and fight those who DID come with weapons with which to return fire. He is on the same level as the nineteen Muslims who carried out the September 11 attacks; on the same level as those who set off bombs that kill the unarmed in Iraq; and on the same level as the most infamous serial killers of all time. P.D.E., Pure Damned Evil.