Mall Gunman: "Now I'll Be Famous"

OMAHA, Neb. — A man opened fire with a rifle at a busy department store Wednesday, killing eight people in an attack that made holiday shoppers run screaming through a mall and barricade themselves in dressing rooms.

The young shooter, who left a note predicting, "Now I'll be famous," wounded five others, two critically, then took his own life.

I'm not sure about you, but I'm certainly glad we have the National Rifle Association working so dilligently to keep "sporting rifles" in the hands of every nut case out there who wants to use one on people. After all, guns don't kill people, people kill people. What the NRA needs to do with that slogan is add "people with guns kill people."

30,000 people a year die from gunshots in the United States and 65,000 more are wounded. 42,884 Americans died in car accidents in 2003. To be able to operate a car in the United States requires training and a license and periodic renewals of the privilege to operate a car. Yet in the United States anybody with money to spend (or who knows someone who can steal one) can walk into a store and buy a gun and start killing people.

Why is it so much to ask that there be more controls on who gets to exercise the privilege of owning a gun when nobody questions the controls on who gets to own a car?

The other disconcerting thing is that Bush was in Omaha at the same time this incident was going down. Too bad he wasn't in the mood for Christmas shopping while he visited the Cornhusker State.