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John Allen Muhammad has left the auditorium.

He departed at 9:11 EST last night. Witnesses say he died much more peacefully than his victims.

Y’all remember Mr. Muhammad and his sidekick, Lee Boyd Malvo. They pioneered Islamic terrorist shooting sprees in the United States. All eyes are currently on Major Nidal Hasan, but seven short years ago Muhammad and his teenaged accomplice held the DC area in a reign of terror with their sniper attacks. (In keeping with my personal policy, I won’t mention the kid’s name again…ever. He’s doing life without parole, at least until the Supreme Court rules such sentences to be “cruel and unusual punishment.” I’m sure the little git has a fan club, but to my archaic way of thinking, cold-blooded killers should be deemed non-persons and relegated to total anonymity.)

I believe in redemption, for most people for most things. We are our own best judges of the wrong things we’ve done in our lives, and anyone over the age of fifteen or so probably has something relatively evil they wish they’d never done in their background. “Normal” people, when they acknowledge their transgressions, feel remorse for their actions. Sociopaths like Charles Manson, O.J. Simpson, and John Muhammad portray themselves as victims of…something, and remain defiant to the end.

I don’t have a lot to say about John Muhammad. He shot people in cold blood. Some cases that are linked to him will never be fully closed. He showed no remorse. He had no final words as he was plugged in for The Really Big Shot. While redemption is available, and comes to most of us, there was none for him. We have a saying in Georgia that applies to people like John Muhammad: “He needed killin’.”

An informal poll run on FOX News yesterday between seven and eight o’clock indicated that 96% of the respondents agreed with this saying.

My father was murdered by a serial killer in 1985. I have zero tolerance for killers. I have known a few people convicted of murder, and knowing the circumstances of their cases, I’m willing to cut them some slack. Their motives were all different, but what they all had in common was recognition that they had committed a mortal sin, and they possessed enough humanity to feel remorse. They vowed—not to some parole board, but to themselves—to never do anything remotely like that again. By retaining and increasing their decency as human beings, those convicted murderers are worthy of redemption. I hope they find it.

People like Muhammad, his punk sidekick, and Nidal Hasan don’t seek, nor do they deserve, redemption by God or by man. I believe that there is an inherent spark of goodness in almost everyone, no matter how badly they may comport themselves. Sometimes, though, people will manage to extinguish that spark, through spiritual enslavement to an errant ideology, subversion of personal morality and responsibility, or sheer dogged meanness. When they do, they become nothing more than a waste of protoplasm, and should be returned to their component elements as soon as possible.

Dealing with terrorists is like playing one of those whack-a-mole games. As soon as one is dealt with, another pops up. John Allen Muhammad has received his final judgment here on earth. Now it’s between him and God. I’m betting on The Deity. About the time society deals with Nidal Malik Hasan in whatever politically correct manner is the expedient of the day, another mutant will show up. Let’s hope that our willingness as a society to deal with these affronts to humanity never falters.

I don’t feel like I’m gloating over last night’s execution, but I wrote this little screed just because I wanted to paraphrase the good-night line from Elvis’s concerts:

“Muhammad has left the auditorium.”

Thank you and goodnight.