black friday/buy nothing day: zombie stampede & guns tax-free

predicting today's zombie uprising,
another cutting piece from the onion:
wal-mart's prices undercut by wal-mart dumpster


2 deaths result from wal-mart stampede
from nydailynews: A worker died after being trampled and a woman miscarried when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart Friday morning, witnesses said. The unidentified worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m. Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him. “He was bum-rushed by 200 people,” said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. “They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too… I literally had to fight people off my back.”

guns go tax-free for south carolina shoppers on black friday
from ap: TVs and laptops won't be the only hot items in South Carolina this Black Friday. The state is offering an unusual perk to shoppers: no sales tax on handguns, rifles and shotguns. The so-called "Second Amendment Weekend" is thanks to a little-debated amendment legislators tacked on this summer to a tax break for energy-efficient appliances. While the energy-efficiency measure doesn't go into effect until next year, on Friday and Saturday gun buyers won't have to pay state and local sales taxes that can total 8 percent. Taxes still apply to ammunition and accessories. "We are a gun-owning-tradition state, a hunting-tradition state," said Republican state Rep. Mike Pitts, a retired police officer who introduced the proposal and has promoted other pro-gun legislation. "Quite often people will buy their pop or grandpop a shotgun or rifle to hunt with for Christmas," he said in an interview by cell phone while out hunting.

2 killed in US toy store shooting
from dpa: Two people were shot to death Friday in a southern California Toys R Us after an argument between rival shoppers escalated into a shooting, police said. The incident occurred in the city of Palm Desert, some 200 kilometres southeast of California, on so-called Black Friday, the day the US retail industry kicks off its biggest shopping period before Christmas with huge discounts and bargains. Initial reports were that two women were fighting and swearing and that gunfire erupted when two employees tried to break up the fight. Witnesses told the Los Angeles Times that both women involved were accompanied by men, one of whom drew a gun and shot in the air before shooting the other man in the back.