Owner of Omaha mall shooter’s gun was on vacation
December 12th, 2007
The owner of the AK-47 used in Wednesday’s Von Maur killings was in Thailand during the shootings, Omaha police said.
Robert Hawkins took the gun from the Bellevue home of his vacationing stepfather, Mark Dotson, police spokesman Bill Dropinski said.
On Friday, a MySpace page belonging to Dotson showed him holding what appeared to be an AK-47.
The page showed a man named “Mark” holding the rifle across his chest. Omaha police wouldn’t say whether the rifle in the photo was the same used by Hawkins in his shooting spree.
Note that it isn’t really an “AK-47″ that was used but a semiautomatic civilian clone.
Anyway, the rifle was apparently kept in a closet and the mall shooter had access to the house and just took it.
Now, there very well may be reasons to keep a firearm in a closet rather than locked up, and I don’t really have a problem with that as long as the gun owner is responsible about it. But to leave it that way while on vacation is not responsible at all.
If you own guns, you need to keep them from falling into the wrong hands. It might be kids playing in the house. It might be burglars. It might be some deranged lunatic hoping to get famous.
Secure those guns.
UPDATE: Here’s the MySpace photo mentioned. Remember that it’s not certain that this is the weapon used in the killings. The photo album appears to be inaccessible, so it’s tough to get a good look at this gun. Aftermarket forearm and looks to have a folding stock. I’ve heard several times that that crime weapon had a folding stock.
Meanwhile, here’s more info on the stepfather in the Omaha World-Herald. A number of things to note.
First, this article states that the initial ID of the weapon as an SKS was made by investigators. I guess I’d hope someone assigned to investigate a crime like this had a little better knowledge of standard popular firearms.
Second:
It is unknown where Hawkins got the gun’s ammunition — two magazines with the capacity to fire multiple rounds.
This shows that the article’s writer doesn’t know much about guns. Ammunition, of course, is held in the magazine. And don’t all magazines have the “capacity to fire multiple rounds”? This is like saying “It’s unknown where he got the car’s gasoline–a tank with the capacity to hold multiple gallons.”
Third:
The AK-47 is a semiautomatic assault weapon that generally is used by the military or collected by gun enthusiasts.
It is not accurate for long-range shooting, which makes the gun impractical as a hunting rifle. The automatic version is popular for military use because it is dependable and easy to manufacture.
AK-47s typically aren’t sold by large retailers. For 10 years, manufacturing some assault weapons, including AK-47s, was illegal under a federal ban. The ban expired in 2004.
“Semiautomatic assault weapon”. Nice. As such, it isn’t used by “the military”. Anyone’s military. And people do hunt with AK-47 type rifles, though I don’t know how common it is. Finally, while AK-47s and some specific models of AK clones were banned by the Assault Weapons Ban, others models weren’t. For instance, Romanian-built WASR-10s that only accepted single-stack 10-round magazines were legal during the AWB.
Finally:
Before the shootings, [the shooter's mother and gun owner's ex-wife] Rodriguez contacted Mark Dotson when she realized that the rifle was missing, Dotson’s brother said in a phone interview from Columbia, S.C. Dotson sent her an e-mail telling her to relax.
As the Dotson family heard news coverage of the mall massacre, Dotson’s brothers suspected that the rifle belonged to him when they heard an assault rifle had been used.
Yeah. Missing gun. Just relax.
We’re going to be seeing charges that Dotson’s lax attitude toward his rifle’s storage contributed to this incident.
Tags: NE
