Robert Hawkins got himself an assault rifle (a weapon banned in Australia in 1996 after Port Arthur), headed for a shopping centre in Omaha, Nebraska, and opened fire killing eight people and injuring five - before turning the gun on himself.

According to News.com.au;

Hundreds of people who had been in the store at the Westroads Mall hid in changerooms and cowered behind retail displays as shot after shot rang out.

Hawkins' friend and landlady Debora Maruca Kovac told CNN she received a call from an upset Hawkins before the shooting in which he told her he'd left a note "explaining everything". When Kovac - who'd taken the troubled Hawkins into her home 18 months ago - asked what he meant, he put down the phone. She said she raised the alarm after reading the note.

"He just said (in the note) how he was sorry for everything, that he didn't want to be a burden any longer to anybody, that he loved his family and he loved all of his friends."

"He said he was a piece of (beep!) all his life" and Kovac said he'd used the words: "Now I'll be famous."

Kovac said Hawkins had been "a troubled young man ... like a lost pound puppy that nobody wanted" when he first came to live at the home. She recently felt that he'd turned a corner. But she also said the 19-year-old had broken up with a girlfriend in the past few weeks. Local media reports said Hawkins had also been fired from his job at a McDonald's outlet, and was arrested on Friday for being a minor in possession of alcohol. The legal drinking age in the US is 21.

Yet again, the US and their lax attitude towards guns comes to the fore. The Amish shooting a little over 12 months ago, Virginia Tech in April this year and now this. When will someone in authority get it through their thick skulls that gun laws are needed and the gun lobby in the US has to be gagged and told that their attitude is contributing to this problem. You can't educate people like Robert Hawkins. It about time people like this were listed and watched, and if needed restrained. They are a danger to themselves and a danger to others.

This article is a result of the suggestion by Lee to nominate this fool for Idiot of the Month for December. And no matter what is wrong with the system - anyone who takes lives is definitely an idiot.