Gun News Daily

This is the latest statement from Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign on the tragic Fort Hood shooting. He wins my “Dumb-As-A-Doorknob of the Year” award.

Helmke’s statement:

“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.”

Having spent a combined 20 years of active and reserve service in the Army, I got to see what a “heavily fortified army base” is. I spent a couple of years at Fort Hood, the largest military installation in the free world and a few other installations, both Army and Marine bases, so I know a little bit more than Helmke does on this subject.

Fort Hood is hardly a “heavily fortified army base.” It’s like a small city of 50,000 people. It’s a typical army base with typical soldiers and their families. Military police function as local law enforcement officers for the base and provide services like most any small city, so they are armed. There may be federal law enforcement present, primarily civilians with either military or civilian law enforcement backgrounds that function as most any civilian police department in your home town. They are there to augment the military police, of which most are overseas in Iraq or Afghanistan. They are also armed like any civilian law enforcement officer.

But, that’s where the similarities end between your hometown and Fort Hood. When it comes to firearms ownership, Fort Hood, as do all Army installations in the U.S. resembles Chicago.

The Army practices a very strict form of gun control. Despite their military duties, training, and illusion that a place like Fort Hood is full of 45,000 armed troops, that is not the case. You can own a private firearm, but it must be stored in a designated armory where it is kept under lock and key, and in some instances under 24 hour guard. Firearms cannot be kept in barracks or military housing. If a soldier is caught with a firearm, it’s immediate grounds for a court martial.

Military firearms such as the M4 or M16 are kept locked up in the unit armory. Firearms are issued to soldiers for field exercises, at which point they may be given a blank adapter and blanks to simulate real ammunition being fired. The only time a soldier is in possession of a loaded military firearm is at a range for weapons qualification. It is very closely supervised, brass is collected and personnel are required to relinquish any unfired ammunition. When qualification is complete, the firearms used are returned and accounted for at the unit armory.

A personal experience with my own M16 points out how gun control works in the military. I was in a two-week field exercise at Fort Hood, an annual event that involved the majority of military personnel on the base. Fort Hood, at well over 200,000 acres can handle two complete combat divisions, approximately 30-40,000 personnel in the field at one time. The day before the end of the two week field exercise I was recalled back to my unit for some duties that needed to be fulfilled. A jeep (yes, I’m that old) hauled me, my gear and my M16 back to the unit. It had been a soggy two weeks with rain that was almost continuous. I wasn’t complaining. I was glad to get back to civilization at that point, even if was only one day early.

At some point later in the day, with my M16 at my side the entire time, I realized I needed to turn it into the armory. The armory for my unit was about one mile away. Now, instinctively I knew walking a mile alone on base with an M16 slung on my shoulder was not the brightest thing to do. It would draw the attention of the military police on base if not every officer and non-commissioned officer that passed me by. The result would be a very bad outcome. You see, I was essentially carrying a military weapon with no security for the weapon, other than me. I asked for someone to transport me to the armory in a military vehicle. None were available. They were all in the field. I was told to go on over there anyway and turn my weapon in by the Sergeant on duty. I wasn’t about to walk, so I dumped my M16 into the front seat of my car and headed on over. As I pulled into the parking lot, got out of my vehicle and pulled my M16 out, a relatively low ranking officer approached and bellowed, “What in the hell are you doing with an M16 in your car soldier?” I explained the situation and he came to the conclusion that I probably did the right thing and let me go to turn in the weapon. Needless-to-say, I heard from the sergeant the next day who sent me over to turn in my weapon. He got his butt chewed out. Despite being in the military, carrying an M16 around or throwing it my car is not the recommended method to control weapons in the Army.

For gun control advocates, gun crimes do occur on military installations. A fellow that I went through basic training with a few years earlier was sent from Germany to my unit pending a court martial that was to be held at Fort Hood. He was a witness to a crime in Germany by other soldiers. Apparently, the crime involved several military personnel engaged in a black market scheme of selling stolen military equipment to civilians in Europe. The civilians were most likely not your basic civilians but spies from other countries, most notably the Soviet Union.

Within two weeks of his arrival he was dead, shot in the head in the barracks one night as he slept. It was a hit to keep him from testifying. Organized crime and criminal activities are not the exclusive right of the civilian world. And, despite very strict gun control on base, if a criminal needs to use a gun, they can get one and they will use it. Everyone is armed who wants to be, and those who follow the rules are not. It’s no different than Chicago.

For all practical purposes on a U.S. Army installation, soldiers on any given day are completely unarmed and defenseless. That’s hardly a model of a “heavily fortified army base.” If anything, it’s a model of gun control that leaves our military personnel vulnerable to attack, either internally by nut cases like Hasan, or externally by terrorists hell bent on killing as many people as possible.

Oddly, just outside the gate is the town of Killeen. Civilians are allowed to carry concealed firearms, own firearms and use them for self-defense. But that all ends the moment you enter the gate of Fort Hood.

There is talk that the military may review its gun policies. If it’s anything less than allowing soldiers to defend themselves and their families, don’t bother with it. Don’t insult members of the military by banning privately owned guns that are already under lock and key and held by the military.

Gun control in the military has played an ugly role in making otherwise brave men and women nothing but victims. If the military can trust their men and women in combat, they should trust them 24 hours a day on any military base, over there or here.

Lastly, it only goes to show when the populace is disarmed, the only good that comes from it is tragedy. It’s simply too easy for people like Hasan to shoot with impunity at an unarmed group of military personnel. The ability to defend one’s life is paramount to our existence as human beings. It is ingrained in our DNA. It is instinctive for us as humans to protect our own lives. Yet, our brave soldiers in the U.S. Army are treated as something less than human when it comes to defending their own lives. That needs to change in order to keep nut cases like Hasan in check. Military personnel have the right to self-defense not unlike civilians. It’s insanity to disarm our military while civilians, some with no military training and living adjacent to a military base, are allowed the basic right of self-defense. Does that make sense to anyone? It didn’t make sense when I was in the Army, and considering the world situation, it makes less sense today.

No one stopped Hasan early in his attack because no one other than military law enforcement was armed on Fort Hood. That’s not the way to run an army.

The Fort Hood shooting by Major Hasan is profoundly shocking on many levels.

Hasan, who I will refer to by his last name only beyond this point, because he does not deserve the honor of being called by his rank, killed 13 fellow soldiers on November 5. The fact that it was Fort Hood, a place I spent some time at is one thing. Having been enlisted myself, and a non-commissioned officer, it is even more shocking that the shooter was a major. Officers of his rank are viewed as leaders, not killers of fellow soldiers.

In my years of active duty and active reserve in the Army, the last person you would expect to “snap” would be a senior officer. However, having heard enough about Hasan, it doesn’t surprise me.

Here’s a fellow that was basically handed a medical career by the Army. Folks like Hasan gain rank quickly and sometimes never assimilate properly as military officers.

Anyone who has spent time in the service just assumes that someone of Hasan’s rank, a major, probably has had some command time, went through significant leadership training and all that good stuff that military officers go through. Unfortunately, that may indeed not have been the case for Hasan. He was in a highly specialized field, where those around him have roughly the same rank, skill sets, and zero leadership skills training.

My take on Hasan was that he acted more like a disgruntled private that had been drafted into the Army. For those not old enough to remember, it was not uncommon to encounter herds of draftees with bad attitudes during the Vietnam War. They didn’t want to be in the army and couldn’t wait to get out. A lot of draftees served with honor and distinction, and a lot of them died in action, and they deserve to be honored with respect. But, the Army was also infected with a percentage of troops that were nothing but trouble. They had a profoundly negative effect on the army as a whole by the time the Vietnam War ended some 35 years ago. Hasan sounds like one of these people. This is a guy that has a good job in the military, a non-combat position, an education provided by the military and a career that some could only dream about compliments of the U.S. taxpayer. Yet, when it was time to serve in a non-combat position in the Middle East, he balked. There were a lot of things we didn’t like to do in the military. But shirking responsibilities is not something a commissioned officer does. Hasan has all the earmarks of a self-absorbed soldier. It was all about him, not the Army, not his fellow soldiers, not his duty as an officer, or his duty to the country.

Whether he was like that because he never assimilated into the Army system and was never provided the opportunity to be in a leadership position that distinguishes Army officers from enlisted or non-commissioned officers, or whether he had elevated his religious beliefs above that of his career and lives of fellow soldiers, is difficult to discern. Maybe it was a little of both. But, one thing is for certain. Whatever was going through Hasan’s head, it was not to ‘take care of his soldiers,’ which every Army officer who has been in a leadership position understands is a primary duty. Hasan was not of this mind-set, which I believe the Army needs to take a very hard look at. It’s one thing to train personnel in highly specialized fields, but to give them the rank and privileges of officers who command units consisting of hundreds of men in combat, has always been a sore spot with commissioned and non-commissioned officers alike.

Everyone knows that the highly specialized officer of the rank of captain (O-3) or major (O-4) earned his or her rank based on their technical merits, not their leadership skills. But, to the average enlisted man or woman or non-commissioned officer, they are an officer first, just as much as the hardened combat infantry officer.

No doubt this incident has placed some doubt in the minds of enlisted personnel. That’s not a good thing. Leadership is a fragile skill that can be lost in very short order in the military. The Army takes great pain to hone leadership skills of its officers. It is important that men in combat trust commissioned officers. It is important officers have the trust of their men. It’s a two-way street. It’s how the Army works. Hasan, with his rank and his dispicable act, broke that trust.

But, the story doesn’t end here. It gets even more insidious as information slowly comes out about those who lost their lives in this senseless tragedy.

It was announced last evening on November 6, one day after the tragedy, that one of the 13 killed was an army reservist from San Diego.

Major John Gaffaney, U.S. Army Reserves, left for Fort Hood on November 1. Major Gaffaney was a psychiatric counselor assigned to the 1908^th Medical Detachment, a unit that specializes in combat stress counseling, with its headquarters based in the Midwest. Major Gaffaney, 56 years of age, had joined the Army Reserves in 2006 after retiring in 1999 from the National Guard. By all accounts, Major Gaffaney was a true citizen soldier, after originally spending his first enlistment on active duty in the U.S. Navy and eventually obtaining civilian credentials in psychiatric care, joined the Army National Guard in 1985. He obtained his commission after attending Army Officers Candidate School. He is the true definition of a citizen soldier. You can read about Major Gaffaney in the North County Times.

Major Gaffaney was not the only mental health officer killed at Fort Hood this week. It seems other members of the 1908^th Combat Stress Detachment were processing through the building in preparation for deployment to the Middle East. Other experts in the field of mental health were present and a number of them were killed or wounded. Initial reports suggest as many as 5 or 6 of those killed were from the same command as Major Gaffaney.

It has been reported that Hasan had been notified of his pending deployment to Afghanistan or Iraq. Hasan spent time at Walter Reed Army Hospital as a psychiatrist and recently transferred to Fort Hood. According to various reports he did not want to go to the Middle East. It seems more than coincidental that Hasan was present in the building, the very day members of the 1908^th were processing for deployment. Could it be that Hasan had been assigned to the 1908^th to augment their deployment? It is not uncommon for highly specialized units like the 1908^th to receive additional headcount from the active duty ranks prior to deployment to fill out vacant positions and bring the unit to full strength. If that is so, this makes the tragedy of this event even more compelling. If Hasan timed his killings to intentionally kill reserve members of the 1908^th that he himself had been assigned to, and maybe ordered to deploy with, it takes this story to a new level.

Highly skilled units like the 1908^th are few and far between. Based on my research, there appear to be only two combat stress units in the Army Reserve, making this type of capability rare to draw from. Could Hasan have timed his killings with the intent of specifically inflicting the most damage he could to the this unit's mission of providing mental health services to personnel in the Middle East?

We may never know answers to these questions, but I fear there is more to this than we have heard, and that Hasan’s appearance at the deployment facility at that date and time is more than coincidence. He may have indeed planned to take out his fellow psychiatric medical officers.

I hope Hasan recovers from his wounds and lives. I hope he is incarcerated in a military prison for the rest of his life. He will have to be isolated from the general population for obvious reasons, which means he will lead a lonely life in which he can fear for his own every single day. Military prisoners may not be the most savory bunch of people, but there is a code, even among military prisoners, that what he did was unforgiveable. If they ever get their hands on him it is not a matter of if he will live, it will be for how long.

May God be with Major Gaffaney and his family and the officers and enlisted who died so tragically at Fort Hood. They were only doing their job.