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Tyr-Ziu Saxnot
04-03-2014, 08:34 AM
http://news.yahoo.com/fort-hood-gunman-sought-mental-health-treatment-084257261.html

Fort Hood gunman sought mental health treatment


FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) — An Iraq War veteran being treated for mental illness was the gunman who opened fire at Fort Hood, killing three people and wounding 16 others before committing suicide, in an attack on the same Texas military base where more than a dozen people were slain in 2009, authorities said.

Within hours of the Wednesday attack, investigators started looking into whether the man's combat experience had caused lingering psychological trauma. Fort Hood's senior officer, Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, said the gunman had sought help for depression, anxiety and other problems.

Among the possibilities investigators planned to explore was whether a fight or argument on the base triggered the attack.

"We have to find all those witnesses, the witnesses to every one of those shootings, and find out what his actions were, and what was said to the victims," said a federal law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to discuss the case by name.

The official said authorities would begin by speaking with the man's wife, and expected to search his home and any computers he owned.

The shooter was identified as Ivan Lopez by Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. But the congressman offered no other details, and the military declined to identify the gunman until his family members had been notified.


Lopez apparently walked into a building Wednesday afternoon and began firing a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol. He then got into a vehicle and continued firing before entering another building, but he was eventually confronted by military police in a parking lot, according to Milley, senior officer on the base.

As he came within 20 feet of an officer, the gunman put his hands up but then reached under his jacket and pulled out his gun. The officer drew her own weapon, and the suspect put his gun to his head and pulled the trigger a final time, Milley said.

The gunman, who served in Iraq for four months in 2011, had been undergoing an assessment before the attack to determine if he had post-traumatic stress disorder, Milley said.

He arrived at Fort Hood in February from another base in Texas. He was taking medication, and there were reports that he had complained after returning from Iraq about suffering a traumatic brain injury, Milley said. The commander did not elaborate.

The gunman was never wounded in action, according to military records, and there was no indication the attack was related to terrorism, Milley said. His weapon had been recently purchased in the local area and was not registered to be on the base, Milley said.


Lopez was from the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico and joined the island's National Guard in 1999. He went on a peace and security mission to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in the mid-2000s, and left the National Guard in 2010 to join the U.S. Army, said Lt. Col. Ruth Diaz, spokeswoman for the Puerto Rico National Guard.

Asked Wednesday about security improvements in the wake of the shootings, Hagel said: "Obviously when we have these kinds of tragedies on our bases, something's not working."



Asked Wednesday about security improvements in the wake of the shootings, Hagel said: "Obviously when we have these kinds of tragedies on our bases, something's not working." Ya think!!!!!

How about having many armed on duty soldiers there pulling guard duty at every building ??
I mean damn, the ffing place is full of military and they can't even carry a gun.
Whose ffing idea was that??

Hussein and this guy had a field day because ALL of their victims were unarmed!! Unarmed on a military base. Something wrong that more on duty military personnel are not required to carry at least carry side arms!!! --Tyr

Tyr-Ziu Saxnot
04-03-2014, 09:09 AM
Ya think!!!!!

How about having many armed on duty soldiers there pulling guard duty at every building ??
I mean damn, the ffing place is full of military and they can't even carry a gun.
Whose ffing idea was that??

Hussein and this guy had a field day because ALL of their victims were unarmed!! Unarmed on a military base. Something wrong that more on duty military personnel are not required to carry at least carry side arms!!! --Tyr

We can give billions to Ukraine but can't afford to keep our own damn military bases secure. This glaring example of weakness , stupidity and incompetence helps our enemies in all their plans!!
Shouldn't the CiC be held responsible for this tragedy yet again!??????
Can the bastard do anything right??

Gaffer
04-03-2014, 10:12 AM
I'm hearing the old PTSD excuse being thrown out there again. It's the same old "he's in the military so he must have PTSD." I want to hear more history of this guy. He was supposedly in iraq for 4 months? That's about how long kerry was in Vietnam. He was said to be a truck driver. Did he see someone get blown up? He was a loon with a gun.

The military should go back to the days of having armed guards throughout the base or post.

darin
04-03-2014, 11:13 AM
Maybe, Just maybe the guy got tired of people fucking with him?

This has nothing to do with "mental health treatment" - he was getting help with depression and anxiety. Millions of people have those conditions. Seeking help is NOT a weakness.

Little-Acorn
04-03-2014, 11:53 AM
Among the possibilities investigators planned to explore was whether a fight or argument on the base triggered the attack.


I'd imagine there is probably a fight, or at least an argument, nearly every day on that base. And on every other military base. And on lots of othe places that aren't military bases.

And the evidence is overwhelming that fights or arguments do NOT trigger mass-murder sprees like this one.

Something I wrote after the Sandy Hook murders a few years ago. Just as appropriate today.

-----------------------------------------------

Whenever something like this happens, we always go through the usual "Oh my, why did he do it, what caused him to do it, what could we have done to prevent this" litany. Every time. I suppose it's only natural to think those things after some horrible tragedy like this.

But wondering what we could have done to prevent it, doesn't mean there WAS anything we could have done.

Seeing this thread just now, was the first I've heard of this event, and I know nothing about it except what's in the posts preceding this one.

But I can probably predict how things will go - since they have gone this way for every other mass murder like this.

The shooter's motives will be analyzed... and it will be found that he didn't really have any "normal" motives. He didn't hate the thirty or forty people he shot. He didn't even know most of them, perhaps didn't know any of them at all.

It will be found that he was a loner who was unhappy and a little weird, but not obviously homicidal. And/or his girlfriend jilted him last week. Or that he got a reprimand on his job. Or got a speeding ticket in his car. Or that he just got back from Iraq where he was greatly stressed. Or that his parents he was living with (if he was) suggested that he get off his duff and get a job. Or he got up two mornings ago, saw a green tree with a red bird in it, and decided from that to go and kill a bunch of people. Or some other thing happened that people can point to as the "trigger" that set him off.

And nobody, but nobody, will point out the fact that the thing that "set him off", is something that happens to various people every day, by the thousands or millions across this country... and none of THEM got a gun and started blasting away at everyone in sight. Not even the loners who were unhappy and a little weird... of which there are lots, in this country of 300 million people.

Why did he do it? Because there was something broken inside his head.

Not something that caused him to lurch around, drooling and babbling and slapping himself. But something that remained pretty much hidden, until a "stimulus" that hundreds of thousands of people get every day, happened to him this time. And the broken thing inside his head caused him to react very differently from the way everyone else has reacted over the eons.

What could have we done to prevent it? Not a damned thing. Because we don't have a "broken thing detector". Nothing else could have foretold that he would do this.

Even if we did have a "broken thing detector", it would probably register on 10% of the population, or more... the vast majority of whom will still never shoot anybody. What we don't know about the inner workings of the brain, would fill books, volumes, encyclopedia sets... if we knew enough about it to write them, which we don't. The "psychologists" we will see on TV for the next several weeks, are completely ignorant of what was wrong with this guy... and the honest ones will tell you that straight out. But those aren't the ones who will be on TV.

Well, that's what will happen over the next weeks. And a few people will say that if we make some laws about certain things, we will have "done something about it"... with no particular reason to think they will have any actual effect on the next guy with a broken thing inside his head.

Here we go again. As we did last time, and the time before that, and the time before that.

Useful result: ZERO. Just like last time, etc.

aboutime
04-03-2014, 02:08 PM
Everyone we hear today always finds SOME EXCUSE to explain, or find a reason for WHY someone does something out of the ordinary.

WE are living in a nation of more than 311 MILLION people.

It is not a perfect world. People are not perfect. Life is not perfect.

It IS NOT possible to keep an eye on every one of the 311 MILLION Americans.

The only remedy would be DOUBLE our population, and assign a POLICE officer to every American.

BUT....who would watch the 311 Million Police officers?????

This stuff has been happening since our nation formed.
Difference is today..we live in an INSTANT News World that takes only Seconds to report
news, most of us never knew about until the next day....before CABLE news, and the INTERNET.

Think about it. Do you know anyone who knows, or can predict what ANY other person will do TOMORROW?
Whether they are civilians, or in the Military. DO YOU KNOW?

gabosaurus
04-03-2014, 04:44 PM
The fact that this type of incident could happen twice at the same base makes me wonder about security and those in charge of it. Not to mention the fact that the military would accept someone with this level of psychiatric problems.
According to what I was just reading, the shooter was in possession of a legally obtained weapon. He was not cleared to carry a weapon on the base, which makes me wonder how he got it in and how he was able to carry it around.
Everyone is suspect here, starting at the top.

aboutime
04-03-2014, 07:06 PM
The fact that this type of incident could happen twice at the same base makes me wonder about security and those in charge of it. Not to mention the fact that the military would accept someone with this level of psychiatric problems.
According to what I was just reading, the shooter was in possession of a legally obtained weapon. He was not cleared to carry a weapon on the base, which makes me wonder how he got it in and how he was able to carry it around.
Everyone is suspect here, starting at the top.

Gabby. FORT HOOD is an Open Base. Anyone can drive, or walk onto the base. It is a very, very large area which cannot be guarded due to the terrain.
So his not being cleared had nothing to do with it. EVEN YOU could get on that base if you wanted to do so. But, since you are so uninformed. Your near-conspiracy theory above is laughable.

darin
04-04-2014, 06:02 AM
The fact that this type of incident could happen twice at the same base makes me wonder about security and those in charge of it. Not to mention the fact that the military would accept someone with this level of psychiatric problems.
According to what I was just reading, the shooter was in possession of a legally obtained weapon. He was not cleared to carry a weapon on the base, which makes me wonder how he got it in and how he was able to carry it around.
Everyone is suspect here, starting at the top.

Reading that type of reply makes me wonder about the future of our society. The more people think like you, the worse it will be. May (your) God (of choice) be with us.