Friday, April 4, 2014

Fort Hood 2

Noticed I waited until today to comment on the shooting?  I was waiting for some of the facts to shake out and be, you know, actual facts.

NPR, the morning after the shoot, reports 2011 Iraqi War US army vet self reporting TBI (traumatic brain injury) while overseas.  Truck driving was his MOS.  Armed with a .45.  No specifics other than handgun.  Was stopped from shooting other folks when confronted with an armed female security guard.  Suicided in front of said security guard.  (Spree killers do tend to stop killing when confronted, and the spree ends with a gun firing, either a gun that just arrived to the scene, or the shooters')

Those are the details as of Thursday Morning. ---

But it's Friday Morning now, getting on to 48 hours.  What details have changed?  Well, 'suspect had known mental health issues' seems to be a catch phrase.  But isn't it always with this sort of thing.  If they spent one quarter of the time they spend now, trying to ban guns, on improving the mental health system in this country.

A later detail: "It was the Ambien!"  Anecdotally, I have never heard someone talk about taking Ambien without talking about freaky side-effects. Like that means anything, though.  It does mean it'd take a lot of convincing to get me to try Ambien if I needed a sleep aid.

He was a Slipknot fan.  Ok, that should have nothing to do with anything.  But it's typical of what you get 24 hours after an event.

Smith and Wesson.  Dunno if a M&P or 1911.

There is still the confusion of the timeline.  Was it over all quicklike, or did it all take several long minutes?

---

Colonel Bateman has what he thinks is the solution.  Boycott places that don't ban guns.  Good luck with that, 'colonel'.  That's the sort of tactic that may backfire on you and your buddy, Mike Bloomberg.  Gonna boycott Woolworths, next, for letting African Americans eat at their lunch counter? Bateman thinks Starbucks banned guns from its stores.  Odd fella.

1 comment:

Geodkyt said...

Um, and how would that have prevented these mass shootings, LTC Bateman?

They almost invariably occur in places guns are banned -- because in places where guns aren't banned, they tend to end early enough they don't wualify as "mass shootings".

It's hard to think of a location, outside a prison or a high security mental hospital, that is actually more "gun free" than a military base. (The numbers of soldiers who actually have access to arms on base at any given moment is infintesimally small, even then they rarely have access to ammunition, and, quite frankly, the odds that there are illegally armed people around are much, much, smaller than in the nearest urban area around the base, because the percentage of habitual violent criminals is so much lower (approaching statistical insignificance) on base. Felons, multiple arrestees, regular street drug users, and gang bangers with no education or skills are simply not found in any kind of numbers on base.