Yes, this will piss people off, and yes, I am in mourning and complete horror at the deaths caused for, what seems, no reason whatsoever...
... but maybe Fort Hood should change it's name? "Fort Hood" seems to keep drawing "hoods", who actually work there, and use their semi-auto sidearms to shoot other people who are also packing.
Full disclosure here: the last time I fired a weapon it was a Defender Scattershot and I missed every damned target at the range (with a scattershot!). (Prior to that? Many years ago my boyfriend had decided that, since we were in Israel, and he was an actual Sabra, and we lived in his Little House about 500 yards from the border with Lebanon, I should get some ordnance experience. He had me take apart and put together his AK. IN the house. On the fifth day? I finally did it in less than ten minutes [he could do it, in the dark, in the rain, under fire, in 60 seconds. Including cleaning]; to show him how proud I was, and since he couldn't hear me as he was in the bathroom washing up, I banged the "unloaded" weapon's butt on the floor: yep. There is no such thing as an "unloaded gun"; only by the grace of my boyfriend and one other fellow did he and I not go to prison.
But it only took him three minutes to patch the hole in the ceiling.)
Fort Hood? Jam packed with men and women who are not only trained to use those sidearms, and trained intensively, they were also carrying.
And yet: the latest news has gone from "four injured" to "multiple deaths".
These people are TRAINED to use weapons of self-defense, and couldn't.
So, sure. Let's give every schoolteacher, lunchroom lady, cross-walker, supermarket greeter, mail delivery person, just everyone, two hours of training in gun use to save themselves and the people around them, and arm 'em.
Because the people who have had virtually thousands of hours being trained to do just that can't seem to get the job done!!
My heartfelt condolences to all who lost loved ones. "Weapons into plowshares": how come the "Christian Right" never seems to remember that little tidbit their guy said?
Ucccch.