FORT HOOD: A GUN-FREE ZONE

The very first question that occurred to me when I heard about the shootings at Ft. Hood was this: how is this possible? How does a guy on a military base manage to shoot 45 people before someone puts him down? Where were their guns?

In “Virginia Tech and the Massacre,” I explained why gun-free zones are the most dangerous places in America. Trolley Square was a gun-free zone, as were Columbine and Virginia Tech, the Nickel Mines School, various post offices, and a dozen other sites of mass killings. For a determined killer, a gun-free zone is a target-rich environment full of helpless victims. If you want to kill as many people as possible, a gun-free zone is the best place to do it. By contrast, you never see anyone “go berserk” at an NRA convention or a gun show because there are always a hundred people walking around with loaded weapons at the ready.

We now know the answer. American military bases are gun-free zones (or more precisely, ammunition-free zones). Regulations issued in March 1993 forbid military personnel, including officers, from carrying loaded weapons. And the exceptions are few. A soldier will be issued ammo at the firing range, and then will have to return any unused rounds before leaving the range. MPs can carry, but most MPs get deployed to combat zones, so there are very few such people in a place like Ft. Hood. That is why the person who finally shot Major Hasan was a civilian police officer.

There will be many lessons from Ft. Hood, and we can only hope that those in charge of our military are not so blinded by their political biases that they are incapable of learning them. One lesson is the utter irrationality of the gun-banners’ belief that rendering people defenseless makes them safer. At Ft. Hood and on other US military installations, this idea has been carried to its ultimate absurdity when those with the duty of defending all of our lives are disarmed and made targets for a mass murderer. If the soldiers at Ft. Hood had been armed, it is unlikely Major Hasan would even have undertaken his deadly mission, but if he had, there is no way he could have claimed as many victims as he did.

The wife of one of the soldiers shot at Fort Hood said it more eloquently than I can. In an interview on CNN Monday night, Mandy Foster was asked how she felt about her husband's upcoming deployment to Afghanistan. She responded: "At least he's safe there and he can fire back, right?"

Copyright2009MichaelKubacki