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Truth.

gunman has stormed through a shopping centre in the US state of Nebraska, killing eight people before turning the gun on himself, police say.
A further five people were wounded - two critically - in the shooting at the Westroads Mall in Omaha.

Police were called to the incident at lunchtime, when the centre would have been packed with Christmas shoppers.

Police sealed the exits and emergency workers were seen ferrying stretchers into the building.

'Bleeding'

There have been differing accounts of exactly where the shooting took place.

Some witnesses said it happened inside the upscale Von Maur department store, inside the shopping centre. Others said the gunman was positioned on a balcony.

"We heard about 35, 40 shots, and on our way we did see someone down by the escalator, bleeding," witness Jennifer Cramer told local media, according to news agency AFP.

"I went around and then I saw the guy in the children's department," another woman who witnessed the attack said.

"Big tall guy, real tall and he just stood there with his arm like this, his hand straight up in the air, shooting. And then I turned and ran."

A worker from another shop said customers and employees were huddled in a storeroom.

"All we know was people were running and screaming down the hallway by Von Maur saying there was a shooting, and then [police] locked us down," she said

Critical condition

Police Sgt Teresa Negron told a news conference she could confirm nine deaths, including the gunman.

"We have two people that are still in critical condition and three that have gunshot wounds."

The gunman's name was not released.

According to the Westroads Mall website, it is the largest shopping centre in Nebraska, with more than 135 shops and restaurants.

Earlier in the day, President George W Bush had been in Omaha for a fundraiser, but he left the city before the shooting occurred.

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Another terrible shooting tragedy for the history books.

Is this becoming a trend in America, what with the recent V-Tech massacre, and other mass shootings in the last few years?

Now we have to listen for weeks in the news about how guns are terrible and should be taken away from everybody.

If you're gonna go shooting up a crowded place, why turn the gun on yourself? Fight the police, go out with style!

Back on topic: With how many shootings there have been recently, this should be telling us that we don't have strict enough control over guns.

At 12/5/07 06:52 PM, KeithHybrid wrote: Back on topic: With how many shootings there have been recently, this should be telling us that we don't have strict enough control over guns.

Gun control sure is dandy. I love the idea of the government telling me what I can and cannot own.

That's terrible.
Whenever I hear a story like that I always wonder what drove that person to such an incedent. It's sad to see that someone would be so selfish into taking random people's lives because of their rage - and even more so sad to see them end their exsistance instead of living through the concequences.
But maybe they went on the shooting spree because they wanted to kill themselves and take as many people with them as they could...

At 12/5/07 06:52 PM, KeithHybrid wrote:

Back on topic: With how many shootings there have been recently, this should be telling us that we don't have strict enough control over guns.

Quite the reverse, with more guns, less people would have died in this incident.

wow now its offical if your a dishearted youth with dreams of being famous well....the paths way to easy =(

At 12/5/07 06:29 PM, Bolo wrote: Earlier in the day, President George W Bush had been in Omaha for a fundraiser, but he left the city before the shooting occurred.

coincidence? i think not.
i'm not making light of the situation, but i felt it was necessary to point out the stupidity of some people using irrelevant information to back their hypotheses.

Says it was a SKS (or at least the police recovered one). Plus it says they heard about 40 shots.

I wonder if it was modified to use AK-47 magazines. The majority of SKSs have 10 round magazines that are fixed to the rifle. The way you load the rifle is via "stripper clips" through the top of the bold. Not the easied thing to do, especially with all the adreline pumping through their system and the obvious emotional state this person would have to have been in.

Thus if a Nebraskan with a CCL would've had a chance to pop this guy after the first 10-20 shots.

There is one gun control measure I would consider is raising the age to buy a rifle to 21.

Another thing might be for the media to agree not to give these guys the publicity, and therefore the fame, that they so dementedly seek.

Elfer made a nice little graph showing zero correlation between gun control and violence.

All this means is that metal detectors will be installed to the entrances to all malls henceforth.

At 12/6/07 01:00 AM, TheMason wrote: Says it was a SKS (or at least the police recovered one). Plus it says they heard about 40 shots.

I wonder if it was modified to use AK-47 magazines.

They don't have to be modified anymore, there are loads of SKS rifles now that are made for standard AK magazines, as well as ones that have receiver-mag adapters to use both.

But yeah, if it was only the SKS then it's probably true that it wasn't the typical 10-round internal mag.

At 12/6/07 01:31 AM, cellardoor6 wrote: They don't have to be modified anymore, there are loads of SKS rifles now that are made for standard AK magazines, as well as ones that have receiver-mag adapters to use both.

When I said modified I wasn't talking about do-it-yourself mods, but any deviation from the standard fixed mag. I guess he could have also replaced the 10-rd with a high-cap fixed mag. I had forgotten about those...

Okay first thing i have to say is that graphs are crap(just like statistics because you can get different results by wording the question different ways) with that said on to my next point.

Who the heck sells automatic weapons and sniper rifles (I'm not a gun expert but I'm pretty sure an ak47 is one of those yes I'm ignorant about guns thats why I don't own any) I mean who hunts with a sniper rifle or automatic it seems kind of excessive like hunting with a freaking rocket launcher or grenades. Shouldn't gun selling to public be limited to practical hunting weapons?

At 12/6/07 02:32 AM, Doublelinked wrote: Who the heck sells automatic weapons and sniper rifles (I'm not a gun expert but I'm pretty sure an ak47 is one of those yes I'm ignorant about guns thats why I don't own any) I mean who hunts with a sniper rifle or automatic it seems kind of excessive like hunting with a freaking rocket launcher or grenades. Shouldn't gun selling to public be limited to practical hunting weapons?

A sniper rifle is nothing more exotic than a hunting rifle. To ban sniper rifles is to essentially ban hunting rifles.

Semi-automatic firearms are perfectly legal to sell, and yes in some situations an AK-47 is a perfectly practical hunting rifle. There is nothing excessive about it; the law allows their use but only semi-automatics (not fully automatic) and magazines that hold no more than five rounds.

I would suggest that since you admit to being ignorant of guns (which is admirable), you should also recognize that therefore you are not qualified to discuss what the shooting public should or should not be allowed access to.

At 12/6/07 02:32 AM, Doublelinked wrote: Okay first thing i have to say is that graphs are crap(just like statistics because you can get different results by wording the question different ways) with that said on to my next point.

Who the heck sells automatic weapons and sniper rifles

First, "automatic" is a term for weapons that are fully-automatic, as in you hold down the trigger and it shoots all the rounds in the magazine or ammo belt rapidly unless you let go. Those are rare in the US, and people that have them need special permits for them. Crimes committed with true full-auto weapons is pretty damn rare.

You probably are referring to semi-auto... which is pretty common among all types of guns and is when a bullet is fired for every pull of the trigger without the need to recharge (re-cock) the weapon with a lever, bolt, or slide.

That is what the shooter used... a semi-automatic rifle called the SKS. Which despite what I'm sure you've heard, is not a true assault rifle.

(I'm not a gun expert but I'm pretty sure an ak47

First off, the gun that was used was an SKS, not an AK-47. Secondly, some AK-47s are full-auto, but this is rare in the US. The majority that are sold and owned in the US are semi-automatic.

is one of those yes I'm ignorant about guns thats why I don't own any)

And that's precisely why your opinion can't be applied to this issue. That's why gun-control advocates are so wrong all the time, they don't know what they are talking about.

I mean who hunts with a sniper rifle

Lol, a sniper rifle essentially is a hunting rifle. It's usually a bolt action rifle chambered to fire a high-powered cartridge capable of long rage, accurate fire.

The rifle that that our grandfathers (proverbial) would use for killing a deer is essentially identical to the rifle a SWAT or Military sniper would use for sniping. The only differences are usually cosmetic.

or automatic it seems kind of excessive like hunting with a freaking rocket launcher or grenades. Shouldn't gun selling to public be limited to practical hunting weapons?

What do you think people shoot deer with? Pea shooting pistols?

An SKS actually is a practical hunting weapon. When used in a hunting application, adhering to the rules to use a low-capacity magazine, the only difference between it and a typical hunting rifle is that it is semi-automatic instead of bolt action.

In fact, little do you know, but the round the SKS and the AK-47 both fire, the 7.62x39mm round, is actually LESS POWERFUL and LESS DEADLY than the typical hunting round. As Mason will attest, this is incredibly useful and logical when hunting in areas that are near urban areas. There is less change that an errantly placed round or ricochet will have enough energy to travel very far to potentially injure someone or damage property.

The typical hunting rifle round in the US, the .30-06, propels a projectile with enough energy and velocity to travel for literally thousands of yards. That's not a very useful thing when you're hunting in an area where the average shot will be less than 150 yds, and beyond that there may be housing, farms, businesses etc..

The 7.62x39mm round the AK fires has a projectile with about the same caliber as the projectile in the .30-06 round, (the .30-06 in metric measurements is 7.62x61) but the .30.06 has a much larger casing, with more gun powder, and room to fit longer bullets that are heavier.

Just for a little demonstration, I happen to have both an 7.62x39mm round and a .30-06 round. The one on the left is a typical hunting .30-06 softpoint round, the one on the right is the typical FMJ 7.62x39 round that the SKS and AK-47 shoots.

Which one do you think is overkill?

lol a simply your wrong would have worked I'm not to proud to say I'm wrong (especially when its on a subject where I have little if any knowledge about) and I'm not about to say I have any clue about ammunition one of the reason i was so wrong was I was being studip and not writing straight after reading so thats the reason i got the gun wrong that and as stated before little knowledge but the only thing i have against what you said about me is you said I'm pro gun control which I don't really consider myself the only way I'm really pro gun control is I would like records to be kept of guns sold sent to the FBI so that when things like murders and robberies occur the police would be able to deal with it faster in fact this was the standard in the U.S. (and this I do know about) until anti gun control legislation and supporters got an act past to outlaw this practice and made all records of gun sales have to be erased 90 days after there purchase (it also forced the FBI to erase all there current records of guns). Now this legislation make no sense to me because the only way you could possibly see it as infringing on your rights seems to be if you actually plan on using it for a crime because when you think about it those records don't hurt anyone who obeys the laws to begin with.
Again im not for all out gun control but passing that legislation was just a bunch of bull.

At 12/5/07 10:12 PM, therealsylvos wrote: Quite the reverse, with more guns, less people would have died in this incident.

with more guns, all that will happen is that this sort of incident would happen more often.

Do you not see the correlation between - shooting spree's + guns in america, and no shooting spree's + no guns in other countries?

At 12/6/07 04:00 AM, dELtaluca wrote:

At 12/5/07 10:12 PM, therealsylvos wrote: Quite the reverse, with more guns, less people would have died in this incident.

with more guns, all that will happen is that this sort of incident would happen more often.

Um actually, more guns in the hands of law abiding citizens would act as both a deterrent and as security measure. If someone runs into a mall and starts shooting at people, and a responsible citizen with a concealed weapon is present, they will be able to neutralize the shooter before they can meticulously kill unarmed people.

Do you not see the correlation between - shooting spree's + guns in america, and no shooting spree's + no guns in other countries?

Interesting...

I
could
swear
that
other
countries
with
tighter
gun
control
had
shootings
as
well

But I guess your little claim there overrides history.

At 12/6/07 06:01 AM, cellardoor6 wrote: But I guess your little claim there overrides history.

lets look at the dates:
1996,1987,1982,1984,1987,1987,1989,1995,
2001,2002,2002,2007

bar the last few, they've all happened quite a while ago now, whereas how many shootings has the USA had in the last few years?

At 12/5/07 06:29 PM, Bolo wrote:

Another terrible shooting tragedy for the history books.
Is this becoming a trend in America, what with the recent V-Tech massacre, and other mass shootings in the last few years?

Such incidents are tragedies for those who have lost loved ones, but they are not massacres, merely crimes. If you want to understand what a mass shooting is, look at countries where genocides have been committed. Eight people dead is not some up in arms catastrophic event. People are murdered in the US quite often, and many of them are overlooked, because they are not an interesting news story. Something such as this incident is a cash cow for news programs to grasp the attention of the American public to further their own ratings.

Gun control, you eliminate guns, but the problem still remains. No matter the restrictions you put on the citizens of a country, the criminals and the mentally unbalanced will still find ways to accomplish their objectives. People get shot, you take away guns, stabbed, take away knives, and then what. People use improvised tools, devices, or their own hands to do the work for them. Violence is a part of human nature, and merely focusing on a tool as the problem only goes to fixating the disillusioned minds of the uniformed public to the fact that a tool is bad, that they have to worry about the tool, and not on how to identify troubled individuals for treatment or incarceration by authorities.

At 12/6/07 06:36 AM, dELtaluca wrote:

At 12/6/07 06:01 AM, cellardoor6 wrote: But I guess your little claim there overrides history.

lets look at the dates:
1996,1987,1982,1984,1987,1987,1989,1995,
2001,2002,2002,2007

bar the last few, they've all happened quite a while ago now

Mhhm, and the Columbine massacre, which was trumped by shootings like the Erfurt massacre, happened happened in 1999. Yet idiots like you were never aware of those other shootings because you only care about a story inasmuch as its relevant to your interests.

You want to be able to point your finger at the US. That's why you ignore that several shootings in similar or greater degree take place in countries with tight gun control. But of course, they go mostly overlooked by the world media.

If it happens in some other country, it's just a horrible thing that happened. When it happens in the US, it has to be twisted into a criticism of the US so that you can perpetuate your continual desire to bash the US to feel better about your own country.

At 12/5/07 10:12 PM, therealsylvos wrote:

At 12/5/07 06:52 PM, KeithHybrid wrote:

Back on topic: With how many shootings there have been recently, this should be telling us that we don't have strict enough control over guns.

Quite the reverse, with more guns, less people would have died in this incident.

;
Absolutely, I mean if a couple of thousand shoppers on all 3 levels had of pulled out their guns & started shooting ???? at the person(s)!!!!!! that they could see with a gun....wait a minute.... Me thinks the death toll would probably been in the hundreds.

I mean, when no one knows what's going on, & there's gun fire who you going to shoot?
Probably the person you see shooting a gun, but if the shooter is just defending himself , how do you know in the pandamoium that is going on all around you ?
Someone shoots at the shooter, is seen from another angle to possibly be the shooter so he gets shot.

NO I think only a moron would believe that if everyone was armed more bullets would not have been flying & even more people would have been killed & wounded.
;
;
;
;
;
shut up More, of course thousands of guns being fired would have made everyone safer !

At 12/6/07 10:47 AM, morefngdbs wrote:

Absolutely, I mean if a couple of thousand shoppers on all 3 levels had of pulled out their guns & started shooting ???? at the person(s)!!!!!! that they could see with a gun....wait a minute.... Me thinks the death toll would probably been in the hundreds.

I think he means allowing guards inside the mall to have guns and whatnot.

I mean, when no one knows what's going on, & there's gun fire who you going to shoot?
Probably the person you see shooting a gun, but if the shooter is just defending himself , how do you know in the pandemonium that is going on all around you ?
Someone shoots at the shooter, is seen from another angle to possibly be the shooter so he gets shot.

NO I think only a moron would believe that if everyone was armed more bullets would not have been flying & even more people would have been killed & wounded.

Shut up More, of course thousands of guns being fired would have made everyone safer !

Most people are too afraid of guns to use one anyway for fear that it will somehow eat their firstborn.

At 12/6/07 06:36 AM, dELtaluca wrote:

At 12/6/07 06:01 AM, cellardoor6 wrote: But I guess your little claim there overrides history.

lets look at the dates:
1996,1987,1982,1984,1987,1987,1989,1995,
2001,2002,2002,2007

bar the last few, they've all happened quite a while ago now, whereas how many shootings has the USA had in the last few years?

And what is the relative population of the US compared to those countries?

Also, I'd like to hear some reasonable logic behind the argument that a person in a shooting like this would be thinking to themselves "You know, I would go and murder a dozen people or so, but golly gosh darn it, guns are illegal, so I guess I'd better not."

The only form of gun control that would be effective in isolated cases like these would be going back in time and ensuring that guns never existed, and then making sure that nobody anywhere ever comes up with the idea of using explosives as a propellant for a projectile.

However, I also don't hold much stock in the theory that a bunch of people having concealed weapons would stop this. When the first gunshot goes off, all of a sudden you have fifteen "heroes" running around the mall with their guns out. It would only work if the whole society was trained to work effectively in that sort of situation.

"guns dont kill people, people kill people"

At 12/6/07 03:39 AM, Doublelinked wrote: lol a simply your wrong would have worked I'm not to proud to say I'm wrong (especially when its on a subject where I have little if any knowledge about) and I'm not about to say I have any clue about ammunition one of the reason i was so wrong

It was not mine nor Cellar's intent to call you stupid, but to rather educate you since you admitted that you did not know about guns. Now I hope you have a little more information to go on...

At 12/6/07 04:00 AM, dELtaluca wrote: Do you not see the correlation between - shooting spree's + guns in america, and no shooting spree's + no guns in other countries?

Simplistic, bumper sticker logic that has been proven a fallacy many times before.

One of the other things you have to keep in mind is that what you're seeing is a rare occurence that gets much media coverage. This in turn has been proven by psychologists, sociologists and political scientists to create a false awareness that a phenemonon is occuring much more often than it is.

My sympathies...

At 12/5/07 11:33 PM, SolInvictus wrote: coincidence? i think not.

Only if you could show that the President had actually been in that mall on the day of the shooting.

I could just as easily argue that the guy hadn't taken his medication all week, went to a 1 day sale at the Mall to get his girlfriend something for Christmas, and upon finding the particular item was sold out had a nervous breakdown and started shooting up the place. After all, it's no coincidence that this shooting took place in a mall at Christmas time.

At 12/6/07 06:36 AM, dELtaluca wrote: bar the last few, they've all happened quite a while ago now, whereas how many shootings has the USA had in the last few years?

Argument By Selective Observation, you're counting the hits (how rare it happens in your country) and forgetting the misses (the fact that it has happened recently because it does not suit your argument) in order to make your argument.

The fact of the matter still remains; Britain has some of the most strict gun control laws on earth, and yet, you still have gun crimes and mass shootings, which runs counter to the liberal thought process of "no guns = no gun crime."

At 12/6/07 10:47 AM, morefngdbs wrote: Absolutely, I mean if a couple of thousand shoppers on all 3 levels had of pulled out their guns & started shooting ???? at the person(s)!!!!!! that they could see with a gun....wait a minute.... Me thinks the death toll would probably been in the hundreds.

Reductio Ad Absurdum. You're taking the end result of your opponent's argument to a ridiculous extreme in order to show what you feel is an illogical argument.

At 12/6/07 11:12 AM, Elfer wrote: And what is the relative population of the US compared to those countries?

playing devil's advocate some more, i think the better question is, what is the relative population of the USA compared to the sum of all of those countries cellardoor posted shootings of, and i think the obvious answer is going to be USA < All those together.