I am going to stray from my niche to talk about a PYSIH article about a tragedy that occurred in a shopping mall in the heart of America this last Wednesday afternoon. Be sure to read the comments. I use the moniker Angry Citizen on PYSIH, and you can see my comments there as well. I have some strong feelings about some of the discussion I have read and participated in on PYSIH regarding this horrible event.
For those of you reading this who haven’t been paying attention to the national or international news depending on your geographic location, the long and short of it is that a troubled nineteen year old went into a shopping mall in Omaha, NE with an AK-47 and slaughtered eight innocent people in cold blood before turning the weapon on himself. Six of the victims were employees of the department store and two were customers.
Certainly there have been tragedies that have cost far more in loss of life, but this one is particularly close to home. I live in a rural community an hour away from Omaha, and I commute to Omaha to work my day job as a county Corrections Officer. The mall where the shooting occurred is where I met my wife. We both worked in that mall when we first started dating. Our families and friends shop there. We do some of our Christmas shopping there. If this would have happened this week, my wife and I could have possibly been in this store doing some of our Christmas shopping. God forbid, our two year old son Valor could have been with us.
I’m sure everyone can empathize with the sorrow a tragedy like this causes a community. No person is an island, and every one of us has a branch of relationships that we have forged that extend far beyond our immediate families. Eight people may seem like a relatively small number, but the lives affected by the loss of eight spread throughout a community.
But here is where I get confused. Did you read the comments following the PYSIH article I linked to?
What is wrong with people?
There appears to be a significant portion of people out there whose reaction to this tragedy is to sympathize with the killer. They want to defend his troubled upbringing as a cause of his actions. They want to blame society. They want to feel sorry for him.
They want to feel sorry for him???
This individual forfeited our sympathy and understanding when he decided to kill another human being. You may think that as a Corrections Officer I am jaded and have a harsh, unsympathetic attitude. You are right to an extent, but you are also wrong. I see the worst of my community. I see what kind of people prey on you and your neighbors. There are two types of people in your jails: stupid and dangerous. The stupid ones I can forgive, but the dangerous ones do not deserve to walk the same streets as you. There are quite simply people who are not suited to being free, because left to their own devices, they will steal from, hurt, or kill you to get what they want.
Corrections is not about correcting an errant individual’s behavior, it’s about keeping you safe from them.
Here are some harsh truths for you: it doesn’t matter how or why, screw fixing them, they don’t deserve your sympathy or concern, and we need to build more prisons.
Criminals are, to one degree or another, sociopaths. The worst of them you do not want breathing your air. Trust me. People may be shaped by their environment, but everyone makes their own decisions. I was apparently predestined by genetics to become an alcoholic. Staying one would have been my decision, not someone else’s fault. Instead, I made the decision 13 years ago that I didn’t want to be a drunk anymore. It wasn’t easy, but I put in the work to break away from my addiction and reclaim my life. Every single human being has the strength to overcome whatever obstacles are placed in front of them. Assigning blame is an endeavor of the weak-minded.
It’s nice that you are a caring, empathic person. It’s great that you’re concerned about the problems that plague our society and want to help. Here’s an idea: instead of misplacing your good intentions by empathizing with a destructive animal like Robert Hawkins, contribute to the Von Maur Victim’s Fund. Take it further and participate in your local Neighborhood Watch. Contribute to your local law enforcement unions when they are raising funds for a cause. Take the time to let the people in your community whose job it is to make sure that you are safe know that you appreciate them.
But do not take the side of a person who forfeited any sympathy he had coming when he destroyed eight families. It’s a slap in the face to all of the people who are genuinely suffering because of this tragedy.
Michael Lankton is the admin of AV Enthusiast, and also moonlights as the AV Editor at Connected Internet.
hell yeah. man you are so completely right on. this is just another reason I love this site.
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i still think he was born evil
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We all have to deal with stress (some more than others)but we do not go and kill people over it. I can’t feel bad for a guy who couldn’t get a handle on things and took it out on other people because of it.
I know he probably needed help but honestly, get a grip!
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I don’t think most people feel that way, I just think somebody just needed a place to spout off her “Stupid Americans and their guns” arguments and decided that would be a good place for her to get attention, as she stopped talking about “Poor victim Robert” after the first post.
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i can feel for the comment that this kid needed help, this whole ordeal may have been prevented had he been given the proper aid. that changes nothing about the fact that he killed 8 in cold blood. I would’ve sympathised with this kid had he killed himself and i sympathise with all the people that are contemplating suicide this very minute, but i do not sympathise with this kid after what he did. he fucking killed 8 people (pardon my french), how can a sane person even start to defend those action?
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Amen
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Oh nevermind, theres a few of these people on here coming into different topics and turning the thing into “America sucks” debates.
What’s going on with that?
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You took the works right out of my mouth! It is beyond my comprehension how anyone can defend Mr. Hawkins’ actions. Sure, maybe he had it rough growing up. However, a lot of us did and managed to make it sucessfully to adulthood without committing a violent massacre. Rail against the system or his parents, but don’t ever forget that while there are several victims in this situation, Mr. Hawkins was not one of them.
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He deserved to die, and those people did not.
I wish he would have been confined to a mental health facility so those other people didn’t have to die. But it was costing lots of money to keep him there. I wonder if the thousands of dollars that the state saved by releasing him was worth those innocent people’s lives?
Lock up the homicidal idiots. Seriously, keep them locked up in a mental health facility where they won’t be able harm people. While you can get access to an AK-47 at your step dad’s house (way to go MOM for not reporting it stolen!She should be culpable, too) Stop shutting down services that provide mental health services. It isn’t for the people with mental health issues benefit. It is for society at large’s protection.
The law can’t lock people up for their thoughts and precrime ideation, but Inpatient sure can. Get a judge to rule that this person is unstable, and get them into the facility!
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Agreed. Everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE has issues to deal with in life. We all have had to deal with rough times, I mean sure maybe not ALL of us have been fired from Mc Donald’s and dumped by our girlfriends at the same time, but we all deal with crap. This idiot just snuffed the lives of 8 people to become “famous”. If he ever got anything right in his entire life it was calling himself a piece of shit.
No one else can be blamed for his actions. Not his parents, not society, not videogames, NOTHING. He is a human being blessed with the ability to use logic and reason when making decisions. He chose not to use either, and for that he deserved death.
Just because you had a shitty childhood does not give you the right to harm others. There are no excuses for that. Plain and simple. Fuck him.
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Quoted for the truth. On a slightly unrelated note…
Your son’s name is “Valor”? That’s a pretty interesting name… kinda medieval. I like it.
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Melanie:
You raise a important issue regarding mental health care facilities in this country:
The fact of the matter is that county and state run mental health detention centers everywhere are closing or closed. It’s a dollars and cents issue. It costs a lot of money for local governments to keep the doors of those buildings open, and they are getting cut out of a lot of budgets, nationwide.
Corrections is an industry, don’t kid yourself by thinking it isn’t. If it wasn’t profitable they wouldn’t be paying me what they do, and there wouldn’t be so many detention facilities. Corrections accounts for around 90% of a lot of county budgets, but if they weren’t making revenue to justify that expense, the doors wouldn’t stay open. City governments pay the county to house inmates that cops take off the street. The state pays the county to house inmates that are awaiting transport or are back in county jails for hearings. The federal government pays the county a premium to house inmates held on federal charges. They also pay to house immigrations detainees.
It’s an industry, and a profitable one. I have job security, because in my business we’ll never run out of customers, and we aren’t affected by seasonal demands.
It costs far less for local government to house crazy people in jails than it does to put them in facilities that might actually benefit them, plain and simple. I spend far too much time dealing with people that belong more in a hospital than they do in a jail. It’s just an unfortunate truth that people fall between the cracks in our society, and there isn’t anyone to care.
I don’t know what the answer is. Governments can’t afford to properly care for their mentally ill so they end up in jails, which doesn’t benefit anyone except to keep you safe from them.
Anon:
Thanks, I like the name too.
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If anyone wants to commit suicide, that’s fine by me, but you have to be one twisted soul to want to take others (strangers) with you, or think “hey, this is a good opportunity to go shoot some random people!”.
Very, very, very strange way of thinking.
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Admin - I agree with you.
Part of the problem is that some people felt that we, as a society, should not lock up people that were not criminals, so strike 1 against the state “hospital system”. Strike 2 - the states let most of the facilities deteriorate - and set laws in place that made repair and maintanence too costly (like deleading a place).
The hospital system could have survived if
1. OK the place is a dump, but many of the patients could have worked to improve the place - OOPS there are unions that do not allow such (I wanted to paint a classroom at my high school and there were issues with the union!)
2. Give some of these people jobs - treat them like “normal” people who just need a little more supervision and assistance than most of us. Kind of like the expensive & invisible “half way” house system that we have.
3. Get used to the fact that some people are beyond reach and give them 3 hots and a cot. These people should cost about the same to house as a criminal, but the difference being that they did not murder, rape anyone.
The conditions that you (Admin) speak of is what gave rise to the state hospital system - people in prison that obviously do not belong in such places.
Correction, if possible, should be done at a hospital, jails should be reserves for punishment.
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If jails are reserved for punishment, how come, in so many instances there are people who get off by reason of insanity and are locked away in hospitals that aren’t going to punish them whatsoever for their crimes?
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We want swift justice. If you murder, then you die. If you force rape, then you get castration. Prisons are too full. Let’s start killing cons, and getting Americans involved in the DP/torture process.
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