Mall shooting - WTF?

[DEBuckeye]

"He basically said how sorry he was for everything," Maruca Kovac said of the note. "He didn't want to be a burden to people and that he was a piece of s--- all of his life and that now he'd be famous."

Mall shooter's suicide note: Now I'll be famous - CNN.com

What the fuck is wrong with people? I wish these whiny, depressed assholes who decide it's time to check out would just do it alone at home and spare the lives of the rest of us who want to live.

 

[NFBuck]

I'm in Omaha this week for a seminar. Crazy shit. I hope there's a special hole in hell for dipshits like this.

 

[OCBuckWife]

If the media would stop making these kids "famous" this sort of thing would decline. It's akin to not showing on TV the guy streaking across the football field. It's an action that is done FOR THE ATTENTION. Don't give them the attention and others will be less likely to follow suit.

 

[buckeyefool]

Exactly.

If the media would stop making these kids "famous" this sort of thing would decline. It's akin to not showing on TV the guy streaking across the football field. It's an action that is done FOR THE ATTENTION. Don't give them the attention and others will be less likely to follow suit.

 

[starBUCKS]

If the media would stop making these kids "famous" this sort of thing would decline. It's akin to not showing on TV the guy streaking across the football field. It's an action that is done FOR THE ATTENTION. Don't give them the attention and others will be less likely to follow suit.

I agree. His intentions were documented. If it wasn't for the attention he could have just put one in his head and left innocent people out of it. Very sad. I hope that guy burns for eternity.

 

[methomps]

"When he first came to live with us, he was in the fetal position and chewed his fingernails all the time," she said. But she said she thought he was improving, as he had gotten a job, a haircut and a girlfriend.


However, she said Hawkins and his girlfriend had broken up in the last couple of weeks, and he had taken it hard. Then he got fired from McDonald's on Wednesday.

 

[CCI]

Its only Teenage Wasteland

 

[OCBuckWife]

It's sad that these kinds of things are preventable as well with a little forethought. For example, this is something that someone doesn't just "grow out of."

"When he first came to live with us, he was in the fetal position and chewed his fingernails all the time,"

This is usually not a good sign and should garner a LITTLE bit of reaction.

Maruca Kovac told the Omaha World-Herald that Hawkins showed her an assault rifle the night before the rampage, but she wasn't alarmed.

This is often a sign of flat affect, not just calmness.

"He was the one guy, you know, if people would be getting in a fight he'd be trying to break it up," Saunders said. "If there were arguments amongst our friends or groups, he was kind of like the calm, cool and collected one."

Especially when combined with known issues like this!

She said Hawkins was a friend of her sons and "reminded me of a pound puppy that nobody wanted." He came to live with her family about a year and a half ago, telling her he could not stay with his own family because of "some issues with his stepmother."
She described Hawkins as well-behaved, although "he had a lot of emotional problems, obviously."

And, by the way, the kid was 19. Is it really that easy to get a fully automatic assault rifle in Nebraska? With a 30 round magazine? Here in Cali all auto and semi-auto weapons have specially made magazines that allow for only 10 rounds.

 

[martinss01]

It's sad that these kinds of things are preventable as well with a little forethought. For example, this is something that someone doesn't just "grow out of."

the fact of the matter is no one cares. i absolutely guarantee you the kid was showing blatant warning signs for YEARS. the kid wanted help but didn't know how to ask. no one cared enough to pay attention.

And, by the way, the kid was 19. Is it really that easy to get a fully automatic assault rifle in Nebraska? With a 30 round magazine? Here in Cali all auto and semi-auto weapons have specially made magazines that allow for only 10 rounds.

when i was 19 and in college in dayton i had the opportunity to pick up an ak-47 with 3 30 round clips for 300 bucks. if i had the money at the time i would have bought it.

you can pick up a fully auto assault rifle today if you really want to. no background checks, no license required. but again, the availability of the weapons isn't the issue. the issue is that a deeply disturbed person was blatantly ignored or even abused further for YEARS until he finally acted out. the kid was clearly begging for attention. well, for about 2 min he got all the attention he had been asking for for years.

 

[MaxBuck]

If the media would stop making these kids "famous" this sort of thing would decline.

Absolutely correct. Proof can be found in the fact that, throughout most of journalistic history, news outlets have utterly ignored mass murder.

[/sarcasm off]

 

[OCBuckWife]

Absolutely correct. Proof can be found in the fact that, throughout most of journalistic history, news outlets have utterly ignored mass murder.

[/sarcasm off]

Nice try, but that isn't completely the same. Small scale mass murderers tend toward more esoteric reasons for what they do than simply getting famous. The rampages are more often than not fueled by an enormous amount of rage. It isn't an inward-directed rage or depression such as teen suicides tend to be. It's an explosive, outwardly directed rage at those the murderer sees as somehow harming him/her or his/her career or chances in life or otherwise "getting in the way" of a rightful course the murderer had laid out for him/herself.

It's a phenomenon in our country that suicidal or emotionally imbalanced teens have lately tended toward taking out mobs along with themselves. It's generally regarded as a "copy cat" effect that is becoming more commonplace. In the past a suicidal teen just killed themselves in the privacy of their own bathtub or whatever.

In that respect, take the ability to become "famous" away, take the influence of a dead, famous kid, away from a potentially suicidal kid and you get significantly lower numbers of dramatic, emo-kid, public suicides. Or, well, should anyway, it's a theory.

 

[OCBuckWife]

when i was 19 and in college in dayton i had the opportunity to pick up an ak-47 with 3 30 round clips for 300 bucks. if i had the money at the time i would have bought it.

you can pick up a fully auto assault rifle today if you really want to. no background checks, no license required. but again, the availability of the weapons isn't the issue. the issue is that a deeply disturbed person was blatantly ignored or even abused further for YEARS until he finally acted out. the kid was clearly begging for attention. well, for about 2 min he got all the attention he had been asking for for years.

Wow. We have some pretty serious gun control laws in place here in Cali. I mean, I know that automatic weapons can be gotten a hold of, it's just not something that is as easy as you make it sound.

And yes, I agree, the availability of the weapons or not isn't really the issue. It makes it easier for something like to happen, maybe, as it makes it easier for a disturbed person to take out lots of people at once, but the kid would have done something anyway. The help he needed wasn't being provided, as you said.