Not much to add

I'll say up front that little, if anything, that I'm about to post here has not already been pointed out on myriad other gun blogs, but the points are important enough to be worth making over and over. I refer, of course, to the murderous rampage perpetrated yesterday in an Omaha, Nebraska mall, by a cowardly, evil loser of a punk.

It is, of course, not only the pro-rights blogs that have taken note of this atrocity--the Brady Bunch has wasted no time in calling for a renewed ban on so-called "assault weapons."

We need to stop selling military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips to civilians. The killer knew what he was going to do, and he knew what tools he needed. Our weak gun laws make these killing machines readily available. We can take steps to prevent tragedies like this in the future.

What the Bradys don't mention is that the psychopath was armed not with an "assault weapon," but with an SKS rifle--which was never outlawed by the now (thankfully) expired ban on so-called "assault weapons." [Well, at least most news outlets are saying that Hawkins was armed with an SKS--CNN is calling it an AK-47--but since the same article also refers to "SKS 7.66 mm ammunition," it's pretty well impossible to put any faith in anything they have to say about firearms.] Anyway, I imagine the next thing the Bradys will have to say is "send us money."

More important than the Brady Bunch's hysterical distortions (which are, after all, quite predictable) is the generally ignored (with a few exceptions such as this and this) fact that this was yet another massacre in a "gun free zone" (or victim disarmament zone, or psychopath's free fire zone, etc.).

Although Nebraska passed a "Shall Issue" concealed carry law which went into effect last year, and even Omaha (surprisingly, I think) struck down its municipal ban on concealed carry, the Westroads Mall had its own policy of victim disarmament. Well, congratulations, Westroads Mall--that policy was just as resounding a success as Virginia Tech's similar policy, or Trolley Square's, for that matter.

If there is any justice in the universe, the ghosts of Robert Hawkins, Cho Seung-Hui, and Sulejman Talovic are suffering unspeakable torment somewhere, but unfortunately, they can take some comfort in the fact that the same victim disarmament policies that enabled the degree of carnage they caused are still in effect all over the country.

UPDATE: It seems that whether Young Mr. Punk Coward Psychopath used an SKS, or what the media calls an "AK-47" (which is generally mainstream mediaspeak for "semi-automatic copy of the AK-47") depends on which media outlet one chooses to believe. Heaven forbid I expect "Authorized Journalists" to get a simple question resolved within 24 hours. I note that the Brady Bunch is now calling the gun an SKS (and still insisting that it's an "assault weapon").

It's worth noting also that the "ban" on so-called "assault weapons" was not a ban in anything like the usual sense--such firearms manufactured (or imported) before the September 1994 effective date of the "ban" were completely legal to own, to sell, and to use; likewise the standard capacity (the more accurate term for "high capacity") magazines.

In short, the so-called "ban" on so-called "assault weapons" would not have been a serious obstacle to the worthless punk.