Sad news

There's been another shooting at Ft. Hood in Killeen.

Three dead, 16 wounded. Three of the wounded are in very, very critical condition.

Shooter took his own life. He had been deployed to Irag, had a family and was suffering from PTSD.

Let's keep these families and all our military personnel in our prayers.

So very, very sad.

It is very sad indeed.

Just think, you make it home from a deployment alive and intact only to be taken out at the one place you should safest.

Just not right.

The sad part about this is it could have been prevented if our own military were allowed to carry weapons on thier own bases. What good is a disarmed military? Where do you think a shooter is going to shoot........ where there are no guns. Duh!

The moral in the military has sunk to all new lows. Suicides have steadily risen to the point that in 2012 and beyond there is 1 a day - double the number in the early and mid 2000s. Making it even worse is the fact there are fewer people in the military now then there were 10 years ago and that with the RIF, they are supposedly only keeping the best of the best.

And its not all PTSD - over half the people that are killing themselves have never been to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Military base I trained at had armed military police, would venture to say all military bases have armed security, we are not always aware of it. Very unfortunate this happened,appears nothing was learned or no changes were made after the same type incident happened few months ago in the same place.

The disarming of the GI's has been going on for years. When my uncle was drafted and in training prior to going to Viet Nam, they were not allowed to carry weapons on base. Then after they got to Nam the weapons were taken up every night (while on base) and locked up. Someone's parents finally, supposedly, wrote their Senator and the soldiers (in Nam) were allowed to keep their weapons all the time. This was early in the war, about 65-66.
I also remember reading about the guys at Pearl Harbor having to wait for someone to unlock the weapons and ammuniton lockers so those guys could retrieve a weapon to shoot at the japanese with. So I guess this has been a policy for decades. I never served, so I'm sure those of you who did will know a lot more about it.

I agree, it's a morale and leadership issue. During the time I was in the Marine Corps from 1953 to 1963, I only heard of one suicide in the entire ten years. Frankly, I'm appalled at how our military is being run nowadays.

SIL is a Navy pilot, says guys are leaving in droves with all the BS the military is going through right now. Seems most of the high ranks are more concerned with political correctness than the moral of the service folks. Our POTUS has dismissed, or fired an unprecident number of the old guard high ranking officers.
Building his private NSA army big time!

I blame the government for this, because a lot of soldiers are coming back from Afghanistan,are having problems with PTSD.Most of them have serve 3 or 4 tours over there.

Going on 13 years of war, something the soldiers of earlier days never had to do. The nearest equivalent would have been the Revolutionary war, but very few troops spent the whole war fighting. Most WW2 vets were never in theater more than a year. Many of todays guys have had 3, 5 or more years deployed.

Exactly. An armed society is a polite society.

Spook I don!t know where you got your information from time sent in combat but my father and his buddy's sent 3/12 years overther and I spent 2 years in nam

Reports all day, including sound clips from the Defense Secretary addressing the Senate, this fella's MOS was a truck driver. He spent 4 months in Iraq, nowhere near combat. In his entire Army career, no combat duty. Post combat duty stress seems highly unlikely in this case.

I listened to a psychologist treating him for depression and some other mental issues, and the guy sounded like he was shaking in his boots, as though he was going to be in serious trouble when the smoke clears. He said that they had been medicating him and were in monitor mode.

I listened to some of his neighbors talking about him as well. Said he was a nice, friendly guy. They never saw or suspected anything like this from him.

What happened? May never know.

I heard one of the stupidest polls ever today, "Given what happened at Ft. Hood, should soldiers be allowed to open carry weapons on base?". That was a question asked of the general public about soldiers on a military base, as though the general population, civilians should have some sort of "entitlement"of what happens on a military base.

To the innocent persons killed or injured, may God bless.

Mark

This is very sad and my prayers go out to the families. I wonder what there is about FT Hood as these seem to keep happening there. The company I was with was sent there in the late 70's or early 80's to haul fuel for the air base. We had 2 convoys of 90 trucks each . One day as we were getting ready to go I was beside the tankers and someone the next truck over hollered he has a gun then I heard the shots. I dove under the tractor and one of our guys tackled him. The MP's which was our escort came and hauled him away. He had only been in the Army for a few months. Thank god no one was hurt.

In my opinion (for what it's worth) this is a symptom with many causes. Some are based in our current culture in which we don't equip our children to deal with adversity, a culture that even though it professes to care about people really places a very low value on people if they have an opinion or occupation that doesn't have value to the leadership. If you ever go through military officer commissioning training they teach you a lot about honor, duty, mission and truth. Unfortunately these values only get lip service in today's military. Don't blame the military it is mirroring the values of our society. I am a former Air Force Captain, quite frankly I don't trust or believe any field or flag grade officer, most of them would put their mother on a street corner selling herself if they thought it would get them promoted. The last duty station I was at the wing had but one mission...get the old man promoted and you were expected to lie cheat, steal and die if necessary to accomplish that. I was assigned to a Tactical Training Wing, their stated mission was to train fighter pilots, our actual mission was to win best MWR (Morale, Welfare & Recreation) and Best Billeting in the Air Force, why? Because this is what will get the old man promoted. Training and equipping troops (the major peacetime mission of our Air Force) was fourth or fifth on the list. Reducing retiree complaints about the BX or Medical group ranked higher than the mission to train and equip personnel to fight. This base didn't admit to having a mobility commitment, mobility meaning having personnel trained and equipped to deploy in support of Higher Headquarters Taskings (like Desert Shield). Unfortunately some members (like myself) where on lists and in war time plans that identified us as assets to be used to support Air Force or DoD missions and that deployment would be separate and outside any tasking or mission of our home wing. Result we were on a list to provide support and our commanders really didn't care or support that because it wasn't their mission.

How many cheating and recruit abuse scandals has the US Air Force Academy been through in the last 30 years? How did the Air Force deal with it? While I was in Officer Training School (yes I was a 90 day wonder) we had a classmate thrown out of the service with a less that honorable discharge for falsifying records indicating he participated in physical fitness training. At the same time Air Academy Cadets were caught cheating on a physics exam, their punishment- they had to take the class over.

We now live in a society with no absolute truths and those in power are willing to trample on our rights to get what they want. My constitutional right to freely exercise my religion and express my thoughts and beliefs is now abridged in the name of political correctness. I am not allowed to pray in some areas because it may offend some people HOWEVER I believe Homosexuality is wrong but If I state that or even express a belief that gay marriage is wrong I can be attacked and maybe even charged with a hate crime. I am forced to accept and appear to approve behavior I believe is wrong.

Don't get me wrong as a former member of the Military I understand that as a military member you have to tow the line and support the orders and missions of you superiors and commands. But to many of our field and flag grade officers are willing to issue unlawful orders to further their careers or even out of convenience, something every cadet and officer trainee is taught very early as being wrong and unlawful. The current military command is not willing to deal with these issues in an appropriate manner.

Our current military adds a lot of stress that isn't really needed to support the mission and the avenues for stress release have been limited. More and more our military members are treated like they have a normal job and we have removed a lot of the support/benefits that used to be in place to deal with these issues.

All the armed MPs on base, or all the cops out patrolling the roads off base won't make a wit of difference if someone wants to start shooting. The answer is for American citizens to be able to be armed if they wish to- on base or in the mall, whatever. Disarming people never, ever works- EVER!

I should qualify that. Disarming people does work...if you are a criminal, psyco killer or tyrannical gov't.