As far as guns are concerned, the news in America is on a loop. One week it will be an emergency at a bullet-pocked school, another week it will be an attack on a workplace. And every day it will be a drive-by shooting or some other bloody incident involving a sick person with ample ammunition but little or no conscience.

This week it was the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Neb., where a troubled 19-year-old who had lost his job and his girlfriend but not his high-powered rifle went on a shooting spree that left eight people dead before he killed himself.

We will not name him in this space -- instead, we exercise a prerogative that news reporters do not have because the killer said in a suicide note that he wanted to be famous. Even if he didn't know the difference between fame and infamy, this space today is for grieving the innocent dead. To be sure, the only difference in this killing spree was the number killed and the location.

It is hard to ignore eight people murdered at once, despite the fact that many more people will die in gun violence every day across America. For 2004, the most recent figures available, Centers for Disease Control statistics report that the United States saw 28,685 violence-related firearm deaths -- the population of a small city.

It is even harder to ignore an attack in a mall. Unlike many deaths that are out of sight and so out of mind, a shopping mall is a potent symbol of American prosperity and, indeed, the commercial side of Christmas celebrations. Occurring as they did amid holiday decorations, these gunshots ring in the consciousness of Americans far away. The constant equation of our culture -- loser plus gun equals death -- has been played out again, inviting more soul-searching for an answer.

To some, that answer will be what it always has been: more guns, more armed guards and citizens who can leap up and stop would-be assailants. But if the problem is the widespread availability of guns, more guns is the illogical answer. It doesn't encourage a non-violent culture where people can go about their business without fearing for their lives.

Culture is the key. It is too early to say whether new gun-control laws would have prevented this massacre or existing ones should have been better enforced, although it is obvious that someone with a criminal record should never have had a high-powered rifle. Gun-control laws, however, are a necessary step to changing the culture. Uncompromising resistance to them is a guarantee that the culture of firearm idolatry will never change.

Pennsylvanians got the latest bitter taste of that last month when the state House Judiciary Committee, under the usual pressure from the National Rifle Association, voted down two reasonable gun-control measures and tabled a third. This came despite a rare move by the governor to argue for the bills in testimony before the panel.

The Second Amendment right to bear arms is not absolute -- no rights are. One person's right stops at the point when it intrudes on other people's rights. In Nebraska, eight people have been senselessly shot down and deprived of their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- and few seem to grasp the greater tragedy. Another massacre, the TV anchors report. Isn't it sad? Now for the weather report ...