What further can be said to this, about this?  It’s just way too sad.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6907088.ece

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6907088.ece

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6907088.ece

US & Americas News

From The Times

November 7, 2009

Investigators try to understand reasons behind Major Hasan’s rampage

Major Malik Nidal Hassan: signs that he was close to breaking point went unnoticed

 

Investigators have begun piecing together a harrowing story of missed clues and sudden carnage left by an army psychiatrist who gunned down more than 40 people on a Texas army base, killing 13, when faced with the prospect of deploying to a war he wished President Obama had ended.

At the time, the signs that Major Nidal Malik Hasan was close to breaking point went unnoticed. Hours later they were being logged as evidence in a case that is likely to end in the death penalty for the sole suspect in the worst mass shooting on a US military post in recent history.

The day before Major Hasan smuggled two registered handguns into the Soldier Readiness Processing Centre at Fort Hood and started firing, he had knocked on neighbours’ doors and offered shelves, a lamp and frozen broccoli from a flat to which he did not expect to return.

He also distributed several copies of the Koran, telling one confused recipient that he was moving to Oklahoma and another that he was deploying to Iraq.

The truth was infinitely more troubling. First, he drove on to the sprawling base in central Texas to which he had been assigned in July after a six-year stint at America’s largest hospital for wounded veterans, in Washington.

Wearing a white salmar kameez and cap, he stopped as usual at a convenience store for a breakfast of hash browns and coffee. Closed-circuit television footage aired repeatedly on US news networks yesterday showed Major Hasan’s incongruous and somewhat chubby figure smiling as he pocketed his change and headed for the door.

His workplace was the Darnall Hospital near the southern entrance to Fort Hood, a short drive from his home in neighbouring Killeen.

How much time he spent there was unclear but some time before 1.30pm he made the short journey, a few blocks west, to the building where 300 uniformed personnel were receiving final vaccinations and eyesight checks before being sent overseas.

When he began shooting, the orderly lines of soldiers queuing for treatment dissolved in seconds into bloody chaos.

Witnesses described soldiers tearing off their shirts to staunch the bleeding of those hit in a ten-minute rampage during which Major Hasan may have had time to reload his weapons, and friendly fire may have added to the casualties.

One soldier who was hit in the initial fusillade said: “I made the mistake of moving and I was shot again.”

A female civilian police officer on contract to the US Army, Kimberly Munley, shot Major Hasan four times and was being described as a hero without whom the death toll could have been far higher.

But by the time the gunman was brought down she and more than 40 others had been hit. She and Major Hasan were among the 30 people wounded but in stable condition being treated in military and civilian hospitals throughout the region.

“She happened to encounter the gunman. In an exchange of gunfire she was wounded but managed to wound him four times,” a base spokesman said. “It was an amazing and aggressive performance.”

Sergeant Steve Hagerman, a military police officer and Iraq war veteran, was one of the first on the scene after the shooting.

“You’re always surprised how much carnage there is,” he said, drawing an unconscious parallel between the tragedy on what should have been one of the most secure bases in the US and scenes he had witnessed in Iraq.

A lifelong Muslim, Major Hasan had told colleagues that he was willing to deploy to Afghanistan but not to Iraq. Officials confirmed yesterday that he was due to be sent to Iraq this month, and Lieutenant-General Bob Cone, the base commander, relayed unconfirmed reports that before starting to shoot the gunman had yelled “Allah Akhbar” — “God is great”.

President Obama, in his second set of televised remarks on the massacre, said he had been briefed yesterday morning by the head of the FBI and urged Americans not to rush to judgment as evidence was gathered and associates of the suspect found and interviewed. “We don’t know all the answers yet and I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts,” the President said.

He said he had ordered flags on federal buildings to be flown at half-mast nationwide until Veterans’ Day, next Wednesday. Mr Obama is expected to attend a memorial at Fort Hood.

A spokesman for the Hasan family, which has Palestinian roots, called Major Hasan’s actions “despicable and deplorable”. He insisted in a statement that the killings did not reflect the suspect’s upbringing as a US citizen born and raised in Virginia.

In Maryland police were interviewing former colleagues of the gunman at the military university where he studied the effects of traumatic stress on combat veterans, and where he worshipped at a mosque in Silver Spring.

Faizul Khan, a former imam there, said: “I got the impression that he was a committed soldier.”

The American Muslim community distanced itself from the actions of a “rogue” gunman yesterday, drawing attention to the thousands of Muslims “who serve honourably every day in all four branches of the US military”, as the Arab American Institute said.

The full text of posting by Major Nidal Hasan on the “social publishing” site Scribd.com:

“There was a grenade thrown among a group of American soldiers. One of the soldiers, feeling that it was to late for everyone to flee jumped on the grave with the intention of saving his comrades. Indeed he saved them. He inentionally took his life (suicide) for a noble cause i.e. saving the lives of his soldier. To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause. Scholars have paralled this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers. If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory. Their intention is not to die because of some despair. The same can be said for the Kamikazees in Japan. They died (via crashing their planes into ships) to kill the enemies for the homeland. You can call them crazy i you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam. So the scholars main point is that ‘IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOUR INTENTION IS THE MAIN ISSUE’ and Allah (SWT) knows best.”

2 Comments

S W wrote: “…somewhat chubby…” And that is relevant how? November 6, 2009 11:19 PM GMT on community.timesonline.co.uk Recommend? (3) Report Abuse Permalink

Sam I wrote: I think that hearing hundreds of stories about rape, torture, murder and death from traumatised US soldiers has turned this man crazy. That, and a feeling of solidarity with his co-religionists. Very sad for all involved. However, the next few days should shed some light Hassan’s motives. November 6, 2009 11:03 PM GMT on community.timesonline.co.uk Recommend? (6) Report Abuse Permalink

  Lovely, JUST lovely!  Peachy keen (NOT!)… I can’t believe this Harper guy and his minority government!  I understand hunters want to keep their guns, so what’s the harm in having them registered.  I’m from the city… I’m not so keen about a neighbour having these things, especially around kids, or if s/he is hot-tempered…yes, yes, guns don’t kill people – people kill people… I understand that, but (and, yes, there IS a but), there are already too many guns floating around and easier to get than cigarettes… Do we really want to make things even more easy?  Let the hunters and riflemen keep their’s… I would guess that they have been taught how to use their firearms and how to take care of them and store them and that they are, for the most part, responsible… and, hey, gun collectors probably are too… and, double hey, city folk aren’t too shabby in the ‘responsible’ area either, but (and there IS a but), responsible people won’t mind having their guns registered.  It has been proven to be effective in tracing them, in seeing their respective histories (and when those trails stopped) and, in some cases, helped solve crimes even before they’ve happened.  If someone is h*llbent on killing another, of COURSE, he is going to succeed with or without a gun… That isn’t the issue.  We have to register for art classes; for marshall arts; for other innocuous things… we need licences and at least some rudimentary lessons for things like driving… do we really truly want to have no idea, no matter how far off, the number of guns out there?  People drink and drive even WITH laws against it – and kill people… People still text-message while driving even though it is not lawful – and still cause accidents… people still go out and have s*x before they are fully ready and have babies even though it isn’t recommended that a life be brought into the world under such circumstances but we don’t live in a perfect world and its chaos is part and parcel of what makes it all go around… sometimes out of the tragedies some good is come of it all… but (and there IS a but) does that mean we have to go all willy nilly and remove even the most rudimentary guides and rules?  We spent so much to put this thing into place… WHY remove it?  For what reason?  WHAT am I missing here?  What blo*dy difference does it make to Harper except that it was some Liberal’s idea to implement the gun registry… What harm can it do?  It seems to actually do some good and no harm…so why remove it?  Why?   I don’t get it… I honestly don’t … this ex-army guy I once knew from the mid-South in the States who believes it is his inalienable right to sleep with his gun beside him was too full of anger and insults in telling me why I was too stupid and so wrong to really let me understand HIS point of view, his adamant point of view, that there should be no gun registry anywhere and guns should be able to be bought anywhere at any time by anyone.. Like this is clear and well-thought out and everything else is insanity (Well, to HIS way of thinking!)… Like the black market isn’t already flooded and this kind of thing wouldn’t add to it just that much more…  I know I MUST be missing something here, but I don’t for the life of me know what. There should be a better way to have some kind of control over what is out there and still let hunters and those in rural areas etc. not get bogged down in expensive and/or time-consuming red tape. No?  How mediocre and uncreative is the thinking of our elected officials?  Come ON!  Put your thinking caps on!! You can do it!  Come up with a better base…

JMO, knee jerk blather, at that…

 http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/720988–house-takes-step-toward-repeal-of-gun-registry?bn=1  

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/720988–house-takes-step-toward-repeal-of-gun-registry?bn=1  

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/720988–house-takes-step-toward-repeal-of-gun-registry?bn=1  

 House takes step toward repeal of gun registryMPs vote 164-137 to give ‘approval-in principle’ to a bill that calls for the repeal of legal requirements to register long-barrelled rifles and shotguns 

OTTAWA –A long-running effort by the Conservatives to kill the long-gun registry has passed an important hurdle in the House of Commons, with a majority voting for the first time in 14 years to study a bill to repeal it.

MPs voted 164-137 to give “second reading” — or “approval-in-principle” – to a private member’s bill sponsored by MP Candice Hoeppner (Portage-Lisgar) that calls for the repeal of legal requirements to register long-barrelled rifles and shotguns.

12 NDP members, eight Liberals, and one independent MP voted with the 143 Conservatives.

The stage was set for the vote to pass hours earlier when Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff declared the current long-gun registry faces a crisis of “legitimacy” in rural Canada and needs to be overhauled.

Ignatieff said his caucus supports the “principle of gun control,” and he personally believes it should include long guns. But he said the issue has divided urban and rural Canadians, and faces “resistance” in rural Canada.

He said his caucus is working on proposals to bridge that gap. In French, he suggested it could include “decriminalizing” the registration system for long guns.

Ignatieff said any Liberal changes would start with a “simple principle: we are for a firearms registration system that includes all firearms, but there is a problem of resistance in rural areas. It could be possible to decriminalize but to maintain a firearms registration system for long guns.”

It was a Liberal government that enacted changes to the Criminal Code of Canada — in the wake of the 1989 Montreal massacre — and required Canadians to register their firearms including long-barrelled hunting rifles or shotguns.

Since 2006, the federal Conservatives brought in successive “amnesties” under the law and proposed government legislation to kill the registry — which has never been brought to a vote.

Instead it supported a private member’s bill knowing votes on those are “freer” than on government bills.

Ignatieff and NDP leader Jack Layton’s decisions to allow free votes by their caucus ensured Hoeppner’s bill won the necessary votes to pass.

“The fundamental issue is to make sure we get a system of gun control which works both for rural Canada and for urban Canada,” Ignatieff said.

“We want to listen to victims groups, sports hunters, legitimate gun owners to find a way to rebuild legitimacy for the gun registry in rural Canada. That’s not a thing you can do overnight.”

Ignatieff downplayed the impact of a Commons vote to give “second reading” to a private member’s bill to repeal the registry.

“It’s not the end of the firearms registration system tonight. It’s only the beginning of a parliamentary process that will be pursued in committee and in the senate.”

Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control, watched the vote from the public gallery in the Commons and called it “appalling.”

“It wasn’t even close,” said the disgusted campaigner.

“It’s horrifying and a lot of Canadians are going to wake up tomorrow and find out about this for the first time.”

Meanwhile, the Conservative government continues to keep the latest report on the national firearms registry under wraps, even as MPs prepare to hold the vote on its future.

RCMP Commissioner William Elliott, who serves as the Commissioner of Firearms responsible for the gun registry, submitted the 2008 report to the federal government, but Peter Van Loan, the minister of public safety, has so far declined to table the report publicly in Parliament.

Van Loan told the Commons the report would be tabled eventually but that Canadians don’t need “another report” to know the long gun registry “is very efficient at harassing law-abiding outdoor enthusiasts and farmers, and wasting money while being terribly inefficient at combating crime.”

The vote late Wednesday now sends the bill to a committee for more study. It could die in committee, or be amended as long as changes adhere to the spirit of the bill. But generally, a bill that passes “second reading” may not be completely re-written to contradict its original intent.

The long-gun registry’s supporters and its critics see the vote as an important step towards the registry’s demise.

Quebec public safety minister Jacques Dupuis added his voice to those urging the federal Conservatives to maintain the registry, sending a letter directly to Van Loan.

After a heavy lobbying effort — including a Conservative-backed radio ad campaign targeting vulnerable Opposition ridings – Hoeppner (Portage-Lisgar) was confident she would get at least eight NDP and Liberal MPs to vote to get rid of the law.

Ignatieff and Layton personally opposed the bill, but cited their respective parties’ “tradition” of free votes on private members’ business.

Under Hoeppner’s bill, longstanding controls on restricted handguns and prohibited weapons would remain, as would requirements that gun owners hold a valid license.

Hoeppner’s bill doesn’t specifically say that all the current data held on long-guns should be destroyed, but the government bill that proposed repealing the registry, currently languishing on the Senate’s back-burner, does. And Hoeppner agrees that’s what should happen.

In its 2007 report, the RCMP — which took over administration of the firearms centre in 2006 — states that the online firearms registry is “key to the safety of both police offers and the public, providing police with immediate access to the information they require in their investigations and operations.”

The registry contains 11 years worth of data on 1.8 million licensed gun owners and 7.3 million firearms, including long-barrelled guns like hunting rifles and shotguns, as well as restricted handguns and prohibited weapons.

Information published on the RCMP’s website rounds up the number of firearms, saying “there are an estimated 7.4 million firearms in Canada, about 1.2 million of which are restricted firearms (mostly handguns).”

However much of the other statistical information on the website related to firearms and violent crime rates or homicide is not up-to-date, but rather pre-dates the firearm registration regulations in Canada in 1998.

The RCMP reported that 2007 saw “better turnaround times” for licences and registrations, growing number of police queries of the firearms registry, and the use of new software that streamlined “production of notices to clients, court affidavits and other official documents.”

“Overall, the Canadian Firearms Program was strengthened and woven more closely into the RCMP’s National Police Services during 2007. It provided better service to law enforcement organizations, better service to licensing and registration clients, and was an important contributor to the RCMP’s overall goal of ’safe homes, safe communities.’ The RCMP is confident that 2008 will see continued progress in the priority areas,” the report says.

It’s not known what overview the 2008 report gives of the system and its operations.

-with files from The Canadian Press