At least seven killed in shooting at Fort Hood, Tex.

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Well, of course he is a nut job just as the young woman who straps dynamite around her waist and wades into an Iraqi bazzare.

Do you draw a psychological distinction between the two?

Yes, I do. One has gone nuts all on his own. The other is doing it under duress. The criminals that people call terrorists (and lend legitimacy to by declaring war against them) take people's kids, and then offer the parent a choice of strapping on a bomb herself, or the criminals strapping bombs onto the kids.

So, yeah. Kind of a big distinction.

But it won't come as any surprise, I'm sure, that I can't agree with your point of view.

dlowan- As horrific as the act was, I would be much more comfortable knowing that this was a lone gunman who freaked out. The thought of groups all around the country planning similar acts is terrifying.

"I told him, `There's something wrong with you,'" Osman Danquah, co-founder of the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen, told The Associated Press on Saturday. "I didn't get the feeling he was talking for himself, but something just didn't seem right."

Danquah assumed the military's chain of command knew about Hasan's doubts, which had been known for more than a year to classmates in a graduate military medical program. His fellow students complained to the faculty about Hasan's "anti-American propaganda," but said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim student kept officers from filing a formal written complaint.

"The system is not doing what it's supposed to do," said Dr. Val Finnell, who studied with Hasan from 2007-2008 in the master's program in public health at the military's Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. "He at least should have been confronted about these beliefs, told to cease and desist, and to shape up or ship out."
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Finnell said he did just that during a year of study in which Hasan made a presentation "that justified suicide bombing" and spewed "anti-American propaganda" as he argued the war on terror was "a war against Islam." Finnell said he and at least one other student complained about Hasan, surprised that someone with "this type of vile ideology" would be allowed to wear an officer's uniform.

But Finnell said no one filed a formal, written complaint about Hasan's comments out of fear of appearing discriminatory.

What I don't understand for the life of me is that Americans
who want guns are protected.

Those who don't are at the mercy or those that do.

I keep hearing the argument that the gun amendment was put in
place so that the people could rise up against the government if they need to.

It seems to me, that the United States government isn't the worry at all.

It's not like, at least in modern times, they have a history of attacking their own people.

It's the people who hold this amendment dearest who seem to be the ones
that the rest of the population needs to be protected from.
The gun lovers are the dangerous ones, they keep attacking their fellow citizens.

Pick the killer and more times than not there is a history
of that person being ridiculed and treated like ****, day in and day out.

It would take something that violated our civil liberties before you saw any uprising against the government. It would take something like the government suspending/eliminating our 1st amendment rights (right to free speach) before you'd see any number of people willing to do something like we're talking about. Or a president declaring marshal law and suspending elections (like some seriously thought Bush would have tried to do, I'm not one of those). I DO think if the government tried to outlaw/ban firearms and overturned the 2nd amendment (or chose to ignore it) you'd see something like this occur too.

Again, this is not the reason I own guns though..

... it never even crosses my mind unless we're talking about it on this board.

What would your government have to do before you'd consider taking violent action against it?

What would your government have to do before you'd consider taking violent action against it?

Has the second amendment been worth the cost?
What have we gained by having it when you compare our violent
crime history with that of countries who have no ownership of guns for citizens?


T
K
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Reserve judgment: all we know is a man just snapped
MICHAEL TOMASKY
November 8, 2009

This massacre must not taint all Muslims.

WHAT will Americans make in the coming days of the horrifying murder by Major Nidal Hassan - a Palestinian-American who was born in Virginia but whose parents migrated from near Jerusalem - of 12 of his fellow soldiers and one civilian?

We should begin by noting that there is no powerful ''anti-Muslim sentiment'' afoot - there were 156 hate-crime incidents in the US in 2006, the most recent year for which numbers were available. As a point of comparison, the UK, with less than one-fifth of America's population, had 106 such incidents in a 12-month period covering 2007-08.

Even so, the national mood, in the wake of divisive off-year elections and terrible unemployment figures, is brittle. On the day of Hassan's massacre, about 5000 right-wing ''tea partiers'' stormed Capitol hill. They're the kind of folks who call Barack Obama a ''Muslim''.

We have much to learn about Hassan before we can jump to any conclusions. A New York Times profile of him notes that this army psychiatrist, who had presumably heard many blood-curdling war stories, obsessively feared being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan.

For all most Americans know about Palestinian culture, Nidal Hassan could be as common a name as Dave Johnson. The Palestinian is an unknown person in the US. Jews are a part of the country and have been for decades, but average Americans pretty much know Palestinians only as suicide bombers. Sadly, for some Americans this event will reinforce an image of a people who resort first to mindless violence.

A Palestinian-American soldier is a strange thing to most Americans. I grew up watching Second World War-era movies about American armed units that invariably featured the following types. There was a tough guy from Brooklyn, usually with an Italian-sounding name like Joe or, better still, Vinny. There was a sturdy fellow from corn-country, who represented the no-nonsense fearlessness of your average American. There was a southerner, a bit slow-witted but lovable, who provided comic relief but came through when the chips were down. The thing they had in common was that every one of them was white.

All this changed post-Vietnam. It came to be understood that wars were actually fought by black working-class and poor people, so Hollywood embraced that. The heavy lifting in the fields of South-East Asia was typically done, in life and in film, by sons of the ghetto and what we sometimes call white trash kids. More recent filmic depictions of the grunt's life have incorporated Latinos. But a Palestinian?

We should assume, until it's proven otherwise, that Hassan was an American and a loyal one, who just snapped, as Americans of all ethnicities and backgrounds and political persuasions do. And, as is so rarely the case in these situations, he's alive, so we'll have a chance to hear him express his views some day.

He was a native-born citizen. He deserves exactly the same legal representation and presumptions as if he were a white man from corn-country.

And he deserves exactly the same amount of anger and fury and contempt from the rest of us for this unspeakable thing he did. Let him rot - because of what he did, not because of who he is.

Michael Tomasky is editor at large, Guardian America.