This is the sixth day in a row that we have had a public shooting- or scare of a shooting- of this sort. The previous five involved schools. Widener University. Purdue University. South Carolina State University. The University of Oklahoma. The shots just keep coming.
But back to the shooting today in Maryland.
"Two employees of a skate shop were killed Saturday when a gunman armed with a shotgun and “a large amount of ammunition” opened fire in the store in a shopping mall in Columbia, Md., near Baltimore, before apparently killing himself, police said.
At a news conference, Howard County, Md., Chief of Police Bill McMahon said that the gunman was believed to be one of the dead and that the shooting took place in a single store on the upper level of The Mall in Columbia. Police later identified the shop as a skate store called Zumiez.
The employees were identified by police as Brianna Benlolo, 21, of College Park, Md., and Tyler Johnson, 25, of Ellicott City, Md. The male shooter, whose body was found nearby, had a shotgun and “a large amount of ammunition on and about him,” McMahon said. He has not yet been identified."
Damn, you can't even go the mall anymore without keeping your head on a swivel. This is not good for American businesses, or, for that matter, the popular pastime of shopping on weekends.
In the meantime we will keep the latest victims in our thoughts, and we will continue to hope that one day, here in America, we will figure it all out.
A metal detector is coming to a store near you.
