Weapons Man looks at the Fort Hood shooting of April, 2014:
An insane nut job, pumped full of God knows what drugs by the military medical community (some stories suggest that he was on at least three psychoactive medications, although early media reports on these shootings are usually crap) and unhappy with his unit’s application of the Army’s rigid personnel-management policies, began shooting people. Then he drove around shooting more people. This decison of his was fortuitous; most people can’t hit much from a moving car, and this jerk was no exception.
The Fort Hood victims were even more disarmed by a redoubled effort at victim disarmament by the post command and Provost Marshal’s office in response to the 2009 shooting. There appears to have been the same laggard, or at least too-late-to-save-lives, police response this time.
When the assailant was confronted by an armed MP, he killed himself.
While the press has suggested that he was suffering from combat trauma (they love that Ticking Time Bomb Vet Narrative™), this assclown never heard a shot fired during a brief Iraq tour. We’ve known a few guys who were so eager to get into fights that dull tours traumatized ‘em, but we don’t think this guy was like that.
Lessons learned:
- An armed assailant in a pool of forcibly disarmed victims has been given an edge by the authorities.
- In this case, the assailant exploited his edge poorly, unlike Hasan.
- The incident ended, and we’re not tired of saying this yet, as soon as force was applied against the shooter.
- This was a predictable consequence of the poor response of the Fort Hood command to the last (2009) shooting incident. Instead of empowering victims, they chose to empower the criminals, relying on wishful, magical thinking instead of the power of logic. If they double down again on their anti-gun policies, the consequences are again predictable.
Gun FreeVictim Disarmament Zone body count: 3 Wound count: 16.