Before we even start,
the shootings were tragic and our hearts go out to the victims and their families.
After that comes the inevitable analysis and this falls into three camps:
1. Those who read no further than than
news sources:
A man opened fire with a rifle at a busy department store Wednesday, killing eight people before taking his own life in an attack that made holiday shoppers run screaming through a mall and barricade themselves in dressing rooms. Five more people were wounded, two critically.
The gunman left a suicide note that was found at his home by his mother, said a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak. TV station KETV reported that the note said he wanted to "go out in style."
... and conclude from that that America needs to revoke the gun laws in the light of yet another senseless citizen shooting.
2. Those who read no further than than news sources, patriots draped in the American flag, defending the constitutional rights of all citizens to bear arms. They will say that the Omaha shootings are not related to the gun laws issue. Already on this blog there's been a lively discussion about these laws
here and
here.
3. Those who are prepared to read far more widely than news sources and then filter the mass of material through the filter of past substantiation and logic. For such people as these, the name Omaha is quite well known in a number of contexts.
The
Franklin Cover-up is well worth a
look, particularly its being ruled as a hoax then that overturned nine years later, together with the
MK Ultra cover-ups [see either orthodox sources like the Church hearings or read books like
Trance Formation and
Thanks for the Memories] which point to
Offutt Air Force Base, near Omaha, as one ongoing source of human misery.
In the light of all that, it is scarcely surprising that Omaha hosted the latest in the attempts to disarm America. If your mind is so constructed that you can reject 100% of this material out of hand, then I have one question. O'Brian's and Taylor's books make quite detailed and specific allegations against, among others, Kissinger and Cheney.
Why, in a litigious society like America, did these two statesmen not act immediately to slap a libel action on the two authoresses for gross defamation and fabrication against the United States itself? After all, Bing Crosby and others labelled the Church hearings as treasonous [though the allegations were later substantiated].
Why has all this material not been debunked? And while we're at it, why hasn't the testimony of Paul Bonacci and
Johnny Gosch been finally and irrevocably shown to be demonstrably false? Those who point to the 1990 grand jury judgement that it was a hoax and Bonacci's subsequent imprisonment fail to mention the 1999 Judge Urbon award of $1 million to this star witness who was supposed to have perpetrated the hoax.
So, coming back to the original question of gun laws, if I were an American and I'd seen all this testimony about my gallant leadership and how the organs of state are utilized [not a pun on Cheney], I'd feel the right of Americans to bear arms in that Most Dangerous Game - Life in America - is a most fundamental and necessary right indeed.
Interesting that these tragic shootings took place about the same time as
this.