Fort Hood Massacre: A Brief History Of American Violence

Featured / Going Postal / November 6, 2009

By Mark Ames

This article was first published in Alternet.

It’s hard to pinpoint what’s the most shocking thing about Major Malik Nadal Hasan’s shooting rampage in Fort Hood, Texas. I’ll start with this: there’s nothing all that ground-breaking about it. Happens all the time, it’s just that we’re a nation of amnesiacs who forget all the unpleasantries, and refuse to learn the valuable lessons. [Just this morning, another “going postal” office massacre in Orlando, leaving at least 2 dead and 17 wounded. Early reports say the shooter was an employee.]

For starters, Fort Hood is located in Killeen, Texas — where one of the deadliest rampage shootings in American history took place in 1991, when an unemployed ex-Navy enlistee, George Hennard Jr., crashed his pickup into a popular cafeteria, pulled out two handguns (Hasan also used two handguns), and murdered 23 people before taking his own life. The day before the massacre, Hennard was eating a hamburger in a local restaurant watching the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings and, according to the manager, “When an interview with Anita Hill came on, he just went off. He started screaming, ‘You dumb bitch! You bastards opened the door for all the women!’”

So yesterday’s Fort Hood shooting isn’t the worst or most deranged mass-killing in Killeen’s history — not by a longshot. The mainstream media is enabling the screaming about the Muslim traitors in our midst, but Hasan killed far fewer Americans than the white, racist George Hennard. And they were bested by the federal government in nearby Waco Texas, in 1993, when federal forces slaughtered some 75 men, women and children in the Branch Davidian compound.

But in what may seem like a strange coincidence, Maj. Hasan and Killeen are connected to another American shooting rampage. Killeen held the record for America’s worst shooting massacre until 2007, when Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 33 fellow students. And Malik Nadal Hasan graduated from Virginia Tech in 1997. Both Hasan and Cho were bullied and harassed — Hasan’s cousin told reporters that after 9/11, his military comrades regularly abused him, calling him “camel jockey.” But the cousin insisted that Hasan’s opposition to the war didn’t grow out of the bullying, but rather from the stories he heard while interning as a psychiatric counselor to veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Hasan even hired an attorney to try to come to a settlement with the US government and leave the service, but they wouldn’t settle for a deal and instead forced him to deploy. He apparently fought it up to the day before his deployment — and instead of going to the war, he brought the war to the US military.

As is often the case, the wrong lesson was learned, and the solution was more guns and more militarization of society: after the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007: a new pro-gun student group was formed, calling for the arming of as many students as possible. The group is called Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, and today it claims over 40,000 members on over 363 campuses. Likewise in 1991 after the Killeen shootings, the state of Texas responded by enacting a law freeing up gun owners to carry concealed weapons. It was President Bush who signed the law as TX governor in 1995 — and it was also Bush in 2008 who signed the first federal gun control law in 13 years after the Virginia Tech massacre.

(It’s already happening in this case: here for example is an article just published, “Fort Hood: Death By Gun Control,” in something called the “Austin Gun Examiner.”)

So Hasan, whose parents came to the US from Palestine, had plenty of personal connections to “Made in the USA” violence and massacres; and yet there’s a frantic attempt to make him out to be a crazy Muslim monster hell-bent on killing Americans. Why would he need to take inspiration just from them, when Americans already provided so many excellent examples of how to mass-murder fellow Americans?

Fort Hood, the largest military base in America, has seen its share of violence as well. For one thing, it holds the record for most soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan — 685 so far — and though we don’t know the figures, it’s reasonable to assume that Fort Hood is responsible for a sizable percentage of the tens or hundreds of thousands killed in those countries since America invaded them. Over the same period, 75 soldiers have committed suicide at Fort Hood, ten in 2009 alone — the highest of any base. In just one weekend in 2005, two soldiers who’d returned from Iraq killed themselves in separate incidents. Last year, in something right out of Full Metal Jacket, Specialist Jody Michael Wirawan, 21, of the 1st Cavalry Division, shot and killed his lieutenant, then killed himself when police arrived. And life in Killeen isn’t much nicer: it has one of the nation’s lowest median incomes and highest crime rates. Earlier this year, a 20-year-old Fort Hood soldier was killed by a Killeen cop who claimed he killed the soldier after being dragged underneath his SUV; the dead soldier’s mother filed a lawsuit claiming that the cop was notoriously out-of-control and violent, and that he shot her son while the car was pulled over.

All of this violence and despair led Fort Hood’s commander, Lt. General Rick Lynch,to build a post-traumatic stress disorder complex called the Resiliency Campus, featuring a Spiritual Fitness Center for soldiers to meditate, and a Cognitive Enhancement Assistance Center. As though a spiritual fitness workout routine could resolve the underlying cause of why a Resiliency Campus was built in the first place.

But if the government really were concerned about all the suicides and PTSD cases, they could have prevented Maj. Hasan’s murder-suicide mission before it happened. It would have been easy: Hasan had pleaded with his superiors not to be sent to Iraq, where he was scheduled to be deployed, but his requests were denied. RIght-wing bloggers like Michelle Malkin and some mainstream outlets have seized on reportsemerging that Hasan supposedly voiced opinions sympathetic to suicide bombers. But if he was an Al Qaeda sleeper-cell suicide bomber himself, it makes no sense why he’d a) argue with fellow soldiers that the wars are wrong and we should withdraw; and b) that he tried to get out of being deployed to Iraq. The 9/11 terrorists did their best to “blend in” and pretend like they were as American as apple pie, because the point is not to draw any attention to yourself if you’re a terrorist planning to suicide bomb a military base. Moreover, the timing of his shooting, the day before he was to be sent off, shows that his desperation had reached the limit. What this suggests is that the massacre could have been avoided if Maj. Hasan’s objections were taken into account.

Maj. Hasan’s opposition to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars puts him where the majority of Americans are today. And he’s not the first soldier at Fort Hood to protest the war. Desertion rates have soared since the Iraq invasion, and Fort Hood has had some high-profile objectors making the news this year, such as Spc. Victor Agosto, who was court-martialed in August after he refused to go to Afghanistan, and Sgt. Travis Bishop, who filed for conscientious objector status after serving in Iraq for 14 months.

Going back to Vietnam War, Fort Hood was famous as the site of one of the first anti-war protests in 1965, when the so-called “Fort Hood 3” refused to be shipped off on the grounds that the war was wrong and illegal. Three years later, the movement expanded: hundreds of African-American GIs protested plans to deploy them to the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and 43 were court-martialed. It was a heroic act: US troops and cops staged one of the bloodiest police-on-citizen episodes in modern history. In 1971, the Fort Hood United Front, made up of soldiers from the base, marched into Killeen, even though the city refused to grant them a permit; hundreds were arrested.

Today, if you read through some of the forums out of Fort Hood, the antiwar mood is clearly strong and clearly a problem for the authorities. So they’ll do their best to paint Maj. Hasan as a Muslim loon. The rightwing has been trying for years now to equate opposition to the wars with pro-terrorist, anti-American sentiment, and by the poll numbers today, that would make most Americans anti-American terrorists.

You can already see the dark, rank heart of the American Soul in anonymous messages posted on underground right-wing sites like Free Republic, a few of which are posted below:

Why is anyone surprised?
We already have a DIRTY MOSLEM TRAITOR in the Oval Office.

What’s one more moslem piece of garbage?

*         *         *

[Quoting a previous posting] **If you are Islamic, you may not serve in our military. Period.**
I’m getting closer to:
If you are Islamic, you may not serve in our military live in this country.

Period.
*         *         *
I’m getting closer to:

If you are Islamic, you may not live.
*         *         *

The story is still fresh and there’s a lot we don’t know, and there are still a lot of conflicting reports and confusion. Since Hasan will be tried in a military court, the American public will only learn whatever the military wants us to learn. And to a nation slipping deeper into its own amnesiac fog, the last thing we want to learn are the painful, threatening truths.

Update: It’s already happening again: a “going postal” office massacre this morning in Tampa that’s left at least 2 dead and 17 wounded. Early reports say the shooter was an employee the company. More details to come.

Mark Ames is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine.

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69 Comments

Add your own

1. pjs | November 6th, 2009 at 10:55 am
I know it’s just an early reaction, but beyond the Vietnam/Iraq Mk I comparisons you’re not offering us much here, Ames. Where’s the bombast I’ve grown used to?
2. bobjones | November 6th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
hey mark, have you boned contessa brewer yet?
3. burbl | November 6th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
C’mon darwinism in action, ‘murikan rotten, ‘slamists rotten, kill each other, good!
4. thuggin | November 6th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
damn … lame ass commenters here are really becoming predictable.
5. Pud | November 6th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Ames. Why am I such a dickless weasel commenting here? Because I like to think I’m “neither left nor right, just independent.” Doesn’t that make me sound tough and rugged? You see right through me though, don’t you. Shit. Aw well. Yeah, I’m a fag, sue me.
But on subject:
It’s glaringly apparent that white people and guns are to blame for all this. Although they’re not to blame for the 23 killed in Killeen in 1991–that was definitely the fault of blacks and Muslims.
6. Carcus Ortley | November 6th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
I am being very pseudo-edgy here, probably because I’m too much of a coward to write anything interesting under my own name (which is why I don’t have a Dylan Rattigan gig).
Since I don’t have that gig, I won’t be. We don’t know Hasan’s motive, ‘though I hope we can hear the reasons from Hasan himself. (“Lone gunmen” tend not to last too long in the state of Texas.)
Perhaps his motive was as mad and greedy and perverted and selfish — the only terms possible in the context of current American “values” — as it is being portrayed.
On the other hand, if his conscious motive was to kill — knowing he too would be killed, and he will be soon enough — to stop his personal participation in further Iraqi or Afghani bloodshed: well, I’m sorry, but imho THAT IS AN HONORABLE MOTIVE.
Of course, it all depends on whose ox is being gored, doesn’t it?
Let’s say:
A Major in the Revolutionary Guard of Iran — in a self-immolating protest against the evil of the Iranian regime — takes down a dozen or so Revolutionary Guard soldiers: how would that be played here?
7. Pud | November 6th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
And as there is no where else to comment on this:
“O, The Shame: Ft. Hood Gunman Acted Alone… Meaning “The World’s Only Superpower” Got Its Ass Served Up 12-dead/31-Wounded vs. 1 Muslim Who’s Still Fucking Alive… 40,000 US Soldiers Can’t Even Kill One Over-The-Hill Islamofascist??? Time To Put On Your Paper Bags, Patriots!”
Hey Mark, I know you know fuck all about the military, so pay attention…. It’s illegal to conceal carry on military installations, and despite your flights of fascistic fansy, the bases aren’t loaded with thousands of troops running around with a charged weapon.
8. Rocktown Rebel | November 6th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
“As is often the case, the wrong lesson was learned, and the solution was more guns and more militarization of society: after the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007: a new pro-gun student group was formed, calling for the arming of as many students as possible. The group is called Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, and today it claims over 40,000 members on over 363 campuses.”
It seems Mr. Ames would rather all of us be completely disarmed and helpless, to save us from ourselves. Who will save us then, from the greedy, genocidal capitalists?
9. Judas Chongo | November 6th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Please remember to capitalize Troops in the future.
God Bless Our Troops, Especially Our Snipers
10. Realist | November 6th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Good thing he was not a tank gunner.
11. nosuchthingasshould | November 6th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
When I heared of this, followed right away in the news by the tampa thing, it really made my day. I actually at first didn’t catch he was muslim, nor do I think it matters – he was american.
The only ‘revolution’ you are going to get will be like this: helpless morons driven to the edge and turning on other helpless morons. Yeah at some point some morons will possibly team up to make it more fun but always, always it will be peasants shooting peasants. The masters are untouchable.
I guess you get the revolution you deserve.
12. Jeff Albertson | November 6th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Motive? He was pissed because he couldn’t get no fresh War Nerd. We’re all getting a little twitchy without it…
13. Fred Thompson | November 6th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
This business will get out of control. It will get out of control, and we’ll be lucky to live through it.
14. Allen | November 6th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
One of the most interesting little tidbits was that Hasan had been trying to find a wife through the Imam at a mosque he attended. Seems like a typical case of a born and raised, alienated and lonely, American cracking under the pressure (aka a valid case of the “going Postal” thing). He might have got his rocks off a bit for romantic Jihad after watching some videos on the internet or something, or maybe he was just driven to murderous rage over his “employer”‘s refusal to respect his beliefs (by deploying him to the Middle East), but that’s probably all just the window dressing …
15. empire in decline | November 6th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Pud,
Just think of the “massacre” as a role reversal.
The soldiers were like the Iraqi/Afghan fighters. Sure they didn’t have weapons, but would that stop any U.S. soldier from killing a group of unarmed Taliban/Sunni/Shiite fighters? Of course not.
Now killing those dirt poor people is considered the height of heroism and protecting our freedom. Nobody really cares if they could fight back, they were considered the enemy.
Now you have a bunch of soldiers who don’t have weapons. Well, they’re soldiers, aren’t they? If you think a bunch of illiterate goatherders are worth slaughtering because of the “threat” they pose I see no reason to think the bad ass heroes of the United States military (best in the world) wouldn’t be assumed to be able to put up an adequate defense.
The analogy doesn’t work as well when you factor in Hasan’s education and experience since compared to the United States he knew far more about his enemy. The U.S. knows practically nothing about the people they kill, but you get my point.
16. Daar | November 6th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
@7 PAY ATTENTION MARK, THE PUD IS MASTURBATING AND BOY IS IT SCARY! HE AIN’T NO PUSSY LIBERAL OH NO, HE’S A REAL MAN! THE TYPE WHO POSTS COMMENTS ANONYMOUSLY. HOO-AH!
17. Pud | November 6th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Please edit my posts Marky Mark. It will bring me closer to you. I dream i’ve touched a nerve, the way i’m touching my own nerve now. Yours, Pud
18. yabadabadoo | November 6th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
This reminds me – WHERE THE FUCK IS WAR NERD? I miss him!!!
19. Metallica | November 6th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Hey Pud, that only makes them even bigger wimps.
Soldiers aren’t allowed to carry guns on military bases! HAHAHAHAHA! Fags!
20. Erik | November 6th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Well, you reap as you sow. Never mind that your articles (and book – how would I know?) on postal incidences are actual gold and that all the commenters so far are sad and pathetic, wanking rednecks…
But… Dismissing out of hand the possibility of a religious motive, you have drugged, clubbered and raped your intellectual integrity and sent it out into the streets to conduct business for you.
Ask your, uh… invisible friend, the War Nerd what this is all about, please.
And having done that, show some genuine, anarchist spunk and write a column about Islam and Europe A.D. 2050.
That is not a request, that is a challenge. Unroll, to put it in French, your member unto the table-top and let’s see what the yardstick says.
21. Tyler Bass | November 6th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Although the details are still coming out and officials are reticent to confirm the details of a mass murder investigation, tons of accounts relay this man shouting “God is great” in Arabic — incidentally, the national motto of Iraq — as he took down his victims and his donation of a Koran before he died. Especially as a doctor treating PTSD sufferers, he must have been highly self-conscious that giving away belongings was classic presuicidal behavior. Whenever his name came up today, anchors would state his religious beliefs as casually as they might his age. Indeed, Mark, the tacit implication is clear, and it’s a very cynical one: He objected more to having to kill certain people because they shared his religious beliefs. Just like how they did with McVeigh. Ha!
Where this all becomes enormously complex is that in some sense describing this phenomena in the mass media implies that it is all fine and even honorable that the world should work this way. Read Michelle Malkin’s blog for five minutes and between the lines is a deeply immoral, nihilistic view of the world in which boundaries between religious beliefs are as dark as a black pearl, one in which killing Muslims really isn’t so bad as killing non-Muslims.
Especially after insisting that the military pay for his rather high-cost education, this coward Hasan should have taken jail time like a man if he wanted to make a serious activist statement. An M.D. in prison lends some pretty heavy social cost to a conflict where sometimes it’s hard to find much more.
However, it is also true that the media paints this man’s acts as products of Islam itself because otherwise they might have to face the difficult, complex choices that philosophically define military life: the very real possibility of being ordered to or even inadvertently ending an innocents life, the fear of doing so, and the all-consuming guilt the doctor no doubt knew well in others.
22. Erik | November 6th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Oh, sorry. Didn’t notice that this piece was originally published on an establishment website. My raving nonsense about spunk is meaningless. Sorry.
23. AIG | November 6th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Muslim arab is angry muslim arabs are being slaughtered by American military, who happen to be his employer.
This happens. He was angry at his fellow co-religionists being slaughtered. What more is there to say?
Well he was american. The two handgun massacre is quickly becoming an American tradition. So I guess he was Americanized after all
24. jono | November 6th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
There was a moment in one early TV report where they said -“we don’t know how many went down from friendly fire”
The guy was shot four times and is still alive.
So how many were shot by the police?
25. Janet Storms | November 6th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
PantoRant: Why is there Gun Control on Army Bases?
http://02e56fa.netsolhost.com/blog1/index.php/2009/11/05/why-is-there-gun-control-on-army-bases
26. az | November 6th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Haven’t we learned anything from Ice Cube, J-Dee, and the rest of Da Lench Mob?
‘A’ is for apple, ‘K’ is for killin’,
I’m killin’ 47 million civillians!
27. Marc Schlee | November 7th, 2009 at 4:06 am
A heavily armed Moslem killing defenseless caucasoids.
28. Baked Dr. Luny is regrettably absent. | November 7th, 2009 at 5:18 am
Aside from your excellent piece (and the increasing credibility of your ‘rebellion’ thesis), what excites me at this juncture is the truanting of Baked Dr. Luny from the comment section. I was looking forward to levelling some puerile invective in his direction and am quite disconsolate to be denied the opportunity. Taking lexical aim at mouth-breathing gun nuts lacks the necessary verve. If you see him, tell him he is a nigger from me.
29. Myf | November 7th, 2009 at 5:56 am
O know a guy who got a general discharge for saying he’d shoot his fellow marines if he sent to Afghanistan. Major Hasan should’ve tried that
30. geo8rge | November 7th, 2009 at 7:32 am
“As is often the case, the wrong lesson was learned”
From your article I do not see what the lesson was. Just vague references to the dark part of the American soul.
“more guns and more militarization of society”
Actually militarization in the US is about submission to authority, veterans benefits, and pensions, not guns or even war. I personally was surprised at how few guns were on a military base and it took what is really a campus cop to stop the rampage.
Sure civilians cannot be trusted with guns but the military can’t, not even officers? They needed a cop to save them. Unbelievable. I bet they used guns a props during the graduation.
I also wonder if being part of the psychological establishment meant he was on various drugs that had suicidal behavior being a know side effect.
31. Dwayne Chandler | November 7th, 2009 at 8:01 am
At least I still have
Carrie Prejean to believe
in.
Ummmm, wait a minute.
dwayne chandler.
32. fajensen | November 7th, 2009 at 9:01 am
I actually at first didn’t catch he was muslim, nor do I think it matters
SJS – Sudden Jihad Syndrome only affects muslims.
33. Hard Truths | November 7th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Tyler Bass makes the usual facile and inaccurate accusation of cowardice against those who stand up against western regimes. I somehow doubt Tyler Bass would have the stones to open fire on a huge crowd of enemy (or soon to be enemy) soldiers and MPs, some of whom at least are bound to be armed.
Hasan died fighting against overwhelming odds for his principles, it appears, and his chosen targets were volunteer members of the armed forces of the regime he chose to fight against. Whether or not you share those principles, that is worthy of respect in my book, not casual slander from de facto apologists for western power.
34. Plamen Petkov | November 7th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
one of the best things that came out of this is all the conspiracy nutcases coming out and claiming all sorts of wild and crazy stories. my fav one so far is at http://www.kob.com/article/stories/s1235603.shtml#disqus_thread
where some guy is claiming a wild shootout between 2 solders who refused to be deployed to Iraq and others who tried to attack them.
35. thuggin | November 7th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
thanks for not fucking with my post, mark. i was high as fuck when i pushed submit … wait … i’m really high right now, too. what does this mean?
36. yabadabadoo | November 7th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
I bet this guy is a virgin himself. Wanted to join the 72 that the effin koran promised. His plan backfired. Now he is gonna get pluked in the penitentiary. By the Arian Brothers. Muahaahahahhaaa!
37. nosuchthingasshould | November 7th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
@32 fajensen
I liked your ‘sudden jihad syndrome’, it is mildly amusing. Yet I don’t ageree it only affects muslims. The increasingly frequent shooting rampages happen among all americans regardless of religion. Each time such rampage happens there is obviously some connection to whatever was bothering the particular shooter most, in this case being sent to kill coreligionists. Yet Ames is right in that ALL of them have as a root cause the feeling of being trapped and alienated as a helpless cog in a crushing machine where you are on one hand expected to be the rugged individual and on the other to conform totally to the demands of the machine however inhumane or detrimental to yourself. It takes a racist prejudice on your part to insist on this being about islam.
38. Hermies Purrbuckets | November 7th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Are you guys still grousing over Fort Hood? Don’t you think it’s time we MOVED ON, and got on with our lives? I mean, this was, like, YESTERDAY, man! Get over it!
HP
39. Hermies Purrbuckets | November 7th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Dead soldiers AND dumbass Amerikans crying in their lite beer. I call Fort Hood a WIN-WIN!
HP
40. Hermies Purrbuckets | November 7th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
One final note:
“HASAN CHOP!!!”
from “Ali Baba Bunny”
Too funny!
41. Antonio Garcia | November 7th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Amazing World
42. Concerned Citizen | November 7th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
This man is a rapist. Give him proper weapons and armor and he may will become invincible. So, instead of granting him his wish of 72 virgins, let’s drop him into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan tattooed with American flags and Jebus. He would have no choice but to anal his own kind and it would be to the benefit of the USA of A.
43. Destro | November 7th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
The American army got pwned! and were saved from an overweight middle aged nerd who snapped (look at him) by a female cop…LOL! Hasan – took the motto of an army of one to heart! LOL! The mockery writes itself.
44. az | November 7th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
42: I don’t understand. What are you saying?
45. burbl | November 8th, 2009 at 8:20 am
No, the best, the icing on the cake, is that he is an army PSYCHIATRIST!
A frustrated 39 years old male virgin hooked on a demented religion is an ARMY PSYCHIATRIST.
Time to use the army jargon about ‘murika: FUBAR!
46. burbl | November 8th, 2009 at 8:24 am
Off topic note to the whiners: no money, no War Nerd, no Dolan.
The Exile is going the ‘murikan way too…
47. kathryn | November 8th, 2009 at 9:40 am
Looks like most most commenters here haven’t the slightest idea of what it’s like to be in prey of raptus (perpetrator or victim…you’re victim anyway) Whether it’s amnesia or ignorance, remember… it can happen to you and me anytime anywhere given the conditions..so please spare us the xenophobic comments, clear your minds and read the article one more time
48. SK | November 8th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
More guns is a bad thing? The thought of only cops or soldiers (government thugs) being armed scares the shit out of me, Mark.
49. Pud | November 8th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
lol, lmao, i.a.m.a.f.a.g.
50. Meredith | November 8th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Come to Australia where no one carries guns and shooting massacres are very very rare. Those that did happen more than 10 years ago led to even tougher gun laws and even fewer shootings.
When are your pro gun lobbiest going to look to the rest of the developed world and see that the US is the only place with the highest incidence of gun shootings and murders? Compare yourselves with anywhere in the UK or Europe or Australia. You carry guns and you shoot people… we don’t and we don’t…
51. burbl | November 8th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
@Meredith
Oh, sure!
Aussies are pussies, this isn’t the way true ‘murikans go:
http://powinca.blogspot.com/2009/11/bitter-irony-of-ft-hood.html
(happily confirming my statements at #3, LOL…)
52. fajensen | November 9th, 2009 at 2:09 am
@yabadabadoo:
“suicide-bomber meets the 72 virgins promised to him”
http://wulffmorgenthaler.dk/strip/2007/09/27
@nosuchthingasshould: It takes a racist prejudice on your part to insist on this being about islam. Of Course. I think Islam is fundamentally evil because it always brings violence, misery and poverty wherever it manages to establish itself. This is an observable in every islamic country so, IMO, there is no need for the (pre) in the judgement. Second, since when did a belief system become a protected species a.k.a. a “race”?
@Meredith: Don’t forget the importance of discipline. Switzerland is the most heavily armed country on earth. The structure of the Swiss militia system stipulates that the soldiers keep their own personal equipment, including all personal weapons, at home! In return for getting real assault weapons every fit-for-military-service male between 20-34 must do mandatory service. And every year after boot camp they do a total of six weeks training per year.
My bet is that any interest in guns is effectively crushed by the perpetual training, discipline, humping them around, firing them, cleaning them – guns just becomes really boring, waste of time, because soon enough training week is here and you will be poking mud out of your Steyr AUG yet again.
53. machete | November 9th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Fort Hood, Orlando, Virginia Tech, DC snipers, etc all hate crimes. Why do they hate so much? Wouldnt they feel better in a homogeneous society? And you will experience their hatred more andmore. Yet the media will not interpret it this way.
54. SK | November 9th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Meredith, wouldn’t you would think Mexico would be in much better shape than it is with its respective gun laws? Hm, maybe there are more important factors we’re overlooking?
Being a dependent on the state for security when it’s the state whom disarmed you and created the need for security in the first place seems unnecessarily circuitous to me. I trust myself far more than a knuckle-dragging cop to save my ass if things get real.
55. Pud | November 9th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Quite interesting how Ames has a website, appears in various magazines and on TV and radio, and yet here I am, an undiscovered genius with opinions that matter and that could change the world if only people would listen. Guess that’s why I post anonymous comments on other people’s sites. Anyway, back to masturbating to online porn…
🙁
56. Tyler Bass | November 9th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
@ Hard Truths.
I’m certainly not apologizing for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. But if you take loans from the godfather (in this case, a medical degree,) are you really going to be surprised when he comes a-callin’ for a favor in return?
If you really thought what Major Hasan did was right, you’d be doing something similar yourself, or at the very least asserting so under your real name. But then again I guess there is net access in jail these days. Maybe you have done it. Or you’ve convinced yourself that you’re in full solidarity with Hasan by defending him under a pseudonym on a blog.
Regardless of all of this, it’s not clear or likely that he was shooting at people actually carrying live rounds.
57. Pud | November 9th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
I wish I was born a butterfly.
58. Oksana | November 10th, 2009 at 6:10 am
“But… Dismissing out of hand the possibility of a religious motive, you have drugged, clubbered and raped your intellectual integrity”
Exactly. And nothing to be surprised about, leftists are hooking up with Islamism worldwide. Ames is just following the trend.
59. kathryn | November 10th, 2009 at 7:36 am
consider this: http://www.counterpunch.org/stahl11062009.html
60. Necronomic Justice | November 10th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
58. “leftists are hooking up with Islamism worldwide.”
I know I scored a hot Iranian in Victorville back in the 90s.
61. az | November 10th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
What is it with so many Persecuted White Male Complex sufferers here? I mean is it just these comments or America overall?
62. nosuchthingasshould | November 11th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
At first I was going to give a point by point response to fajensen’s drivel, but then realised that his statements drip with such obvious xenophobia, cultural shauvinism, fox style brainwashing and yes, racism that it would be pointles. Those who agree with him are like him, and the only sensible reaction is to fight, undermine, oppose and discriminate against them in real life, not argue in a blog comment section. Others see him for what he is.
63. fajensen | November 11th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
@nosuchthingasshould:
Hahaha. So Rich. You were going to … but Failed. Realising that you too cannot bring yourself say anything good about Islam.
That was perhaps the stage where you should have let it go, instead of telling the world at large that while you can think of nothing .not.even.one.single.good.thing in that single area you are plenty creative in other respects and thereby not actually a moron but maybe striving too hard to become one, to better fit in amongst cultivated people.
Well, good luck with your project. I am sure you will succeed.
64. Ben | November 11th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Ames writes: “So Hasan, whose parents came to the US from Palestine, had plenty of personal connections to “Made in the USA” violence and massacres; and yet there’s a frantic attempt to make him out to be a crazy Muslim monster hell-bent on killing Americans.”
Also plenty of connections to “Made in Gaza” violence and massacres. But commentators’ political slant makes them emphasize one side over the other. Palestinian bomb culture is fucked up AND American gun culture is fucked up. You combine the two in one swirling pot and you get this guy. No one is innocent, idealist swine.
65. Frank McG | November 11th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
I honestly can’t tell anymore which Free Republic posts are legit and which are trolls.
I still for the life of me cannot understand why some people think that more concealed carriers is going to solve the postal problem.
Imagine if everyone carried. How in the world are you supposed to identify the shooter from everyone else who drew their gun at the sound of shots? Just imagine how that would play out. Hear shots, turn around, see some bodies and people with drawn guns. Is the shooter one of the bodies? Is he one of the people with drawn guns? You hear shots in your office and you round the corner to bump into someone with a drawn gun. Shooter or “responsible” concealed carry citizen? Quick! You only have half a second to make the call!
Can you just imagine what kind of OK Corral clusterfuck would happen with hundreds of itchy Travis Bickles in that situation? The reason you read stories about off duty cops taking the shooter out is because the shooter stood out like a sore thumb: he’s the only civilian garbed individual toting guns. If EVERYONE carried how would the cop tell them apart?
Just take a look at Fort Hood where everyone carried guns. Constantly fluctuating stories to cover up friendly fire incidents.
66. Neil | November 11th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
I have a thing about Jews. Interested in hearing it? It’s really interesting.
67. adolphhitler | November 12th, 2009 at 10:42 am
@66 let’er rip neil, we’re all ears!
68. adolphhitler | November 12th, 2009 at 10:47 am
@65…shooters only go where they know everyone is unarmed…if every one was armed they would have no where to go and wouldn’t get very far if they did. have you ever heard of a mass shooting in the old wild west when everone was armed?
69. cool hay | April 22nd, 2010 at 8:31 pm
here all are feeling fuckin pain on hasan act,,,what about da innocent people going just for their marriage cermonies in Iraq, Afghanistan,,and American started bombaring on innocent,,,and then saying in apology manner that it is mistaken,,,,,,why da fuckin they are doing ????