There’s little to say about the second Fort Hood massacre that wasn’t said about the first.
A mad man decided to take his issues first out on other people, then on himself. Mental health professionals and other excuse-mongers will say his childhood made him do it, or the Ambien made him do it. They will say these things not because they make sense or because they honestly believe them, but because it makes them feel kind and compassionate and, most of all, superior in the eyes of others. Lawsuits and finger pointing will ensue.
There is one issue worth addressing that wasn’t addressed the last time, and won’t be this time either, not so long as we have the current fools who run our country in charge.
One military official tried to diplomatically bring the issue up when he said, “We need to harden our military bases so this can’t happen, and one possible way to do that is to allow our veterans and active duty military to carry weapons.”
Gee, you think?
A survivor of the 2009 attack added, “When our soldiers are unarmed they will find themselves in a situation like yesterday and 2009.”
The parent of a soldier who was an eyewitness at the latest shooting called his son and others in the military “defenseless, sitting ducks.” That sums it up honestly, and accurately. [Source for quotes: FoxNews.com 4/3/14]
Most Americans probably don’t realize that soldiers at Fort Hood are subject to the same gun controls that many politicians want to impose on the country at large. It supposedly makes citizens safer for the government to disarm them. Yet if that’s true, then why are soldiers at Fort Hood and elsewhere less safe after they are disarmed?
Even if you can’t prove that allowing soldiers to be armed on their own military bases would protect them (as if proof were necessary), what does it say about the moral stature of such a policy? Here we ask and expect these soldiers to defend us against enemy attack, as well as engage in foreign wars on our behalf. Yet we don’t allow them to protect themselves against any would-be killer who happens to sneak in to their bases or ranks every so often.
It’s disgusting. And, frankly, it’s more than a little sadistic.
This is what happens when you put people in charge of the military who either do not understand the military, or who loathe it. Those are the kind of people we have in charge of the federal government, from Barack Obama on down, and the military is unfortunately forced to contend with their incredibly naive and stupid views.
We’re asking trained soldiers — people whom we’re counting on to protect us from physical violence — to give up their right to protect themselves on their own bases. For what reason? To advance the fiction that you can end violence by getting rid of guns. “People don’t kill people. Guns do.”
It logically follows from this absurd premise that you can make soldiers safer by refusing to allow them near guns, other than when you absolutely have to. This would be like disarming the police in the name of protecting us from criminals. I would say I can’t believe it’s even a matter of debate. But so many Americans seem so brain dead on so many issues these days, and their elected officials so cowardly, it’s not even a debate.
Disarming the innocent — morally or literally — advances the interests of those who aren’t innocent. Throwing a pity party for the latest gunman who chose to take innocent others along with him in his suicide won’t change a thing.
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