The shooting was the third major gun attack at a U.S. military installation in five years, leaving the nation grappling with the prospect of yet more flag-draped funerals for troops killed on the homefront. A government contractor went on a shooting rampage at the Washington Navy Yard in September, leaving 12 people dead. In 2009, Army Maj. Nidal M. Hasan opened fire on a group of soldiers at Fort Hood preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan, killing 13 people and wounding more than 30.
Doctors at the Scott & White hospital in Temple, Tex., said Wednesday that they have treated eight of the wounded and that one more was on the way. Three of the patients were in critical condition in the ICU, and five were in serious condition. Seven of them were male, and one was female. Their injuries ranged from mild to life-threatening, a majority of them caused by single-gunshot wounds to the neck, chest and abdomen.
President Obama said he was “heartbroken that something like this might have happened again.” Speaking during a fundraising trip to Chicago, he pledged “to get to the bottom of exactly what happened.”
I’m as heartbroken. I know several active servicemen and women and retired, resigned, and discharged ones. Who wants to worry about the people at home?
But the article also provokes questions: is this act an outlier or the norm? Not an everyday occurrence, but we dwell on these incidents as if they were. Also, once again the big issue associated with mass shooting that is waiting for an solution that works is how people with mental health issues are treated and dealt with outside of the clinical setting. Lots of looking the other way, and it’s been that way for decades. How old is the phrase “going postal?” The killings at Virginia Tech are already 7 years old; what’s changed?
There also still remains this chronic, obtuse refusal to consider what Hasan did as something a bit different: a terrorist attack.