If you have not served in the military, or like me, worked as a civilian employee of a military department, you may not realize that Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen are not allowed to carry guns on base, except for specific training purposes. When they do, they are unloaded, and ammunition is allotted very sparingly for the purpose at hand. Otherwise, guns are kept locked up in armories. Further, while I have never been to Ft. Hood, I have been to a number of military installations, and none are what you would think of as "heavily fortified." I doubt Ft. Hood is any different. A quote:
Neither Smith nor the other victims of Hasan's assault had guns because soldiers on military bases within the United States generally are not allowed to carry them. Last week's shootings, which killed 13 people and wounded more than 30, demonstrated once again the folly of "gun-free zones," which attract and assist people bent on mass murder instead of deterring them.Except that is exactly the thing shown by John Lott's book "More Guns, Less Crime," and it is easy to see why more guns in the hands of responsible citizens equals less crime. Criminals may be amoral, and often not the sharpest specimens of humankind, but they are generally not deliberately suicidal. When shall issue concealed carry is allowed, the criminal planning on mayhem must calculate the unknown; "which of these people might be armed and stop me, or kill me outright?" So, if a criminal had to choose weather to hold up a convenience store with no posting of "no guns" and a liquor store with such a posting, all things being equal, which one do you think he is going to pick for a robbery? If you guess the liquor store, you would be right. Back to the Ft. Hood shooting:
Judging from the comments of those who support this policy of victim disarmament, Smith's desire for a gun was irrational. According to Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, "This latest tragedy, at a heavily fortified Army base, ought to convince more Americans to reject the argument that the solution to gun violence is to arm more people with more guns in more places."
The first people with guns to confront Hasan, two local police officers, were the ones who put a stop to his rampage. And while Sgt. Kim Munley and Sgt. Mark Todd acted heroically, they did not arrive on the scene until a crucial 10 minutes or so had elapsed and Hasan had fired more than 100 rounds.Exactly right. But this lesson will be another that will be ignored by those who will shortly be performing a "Lessons Learned" drill.
If someone else at the processing center had a gun when Hasan started shooting, it seems likely that fewer people would have been killed or injured. Furthermore, the knowledge that some of his victims would be armed might have led him to choose a different, softer target in order to maximize the impact of his attack.
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