"Fort Hood Massacre" - over 100 rounds fired from 2 hand guns - no one jumped this person while reloading?
Not questioning anyone's bravery. The soldiers were unarmed. But this shooter must have reloaded. One pistol was a revolver - relatively slow to reload. 300 soldiers right there. Would not one of them jump this person and wrestle him down while reloading? Was everyone ducking and hiding? Same as the Virgina Tech shooting. People did not attack the attacker. Wonder what I would do? I hope I would have charged during the lull in firing. I guess we never know what we might do.
I realize I might freeze as well. I have not had guns pointed and fired at me. I have not been a trained fighting man.
CNN is reporting right now that over 100 rounds were fired. One gun was a .357 magnum. That's a five round revolver. The other was an FN semi-automatic 5.7 mm. Maybe that held 15 rounds. He must have reloaded at least five times. The police arrived in 3 minutes, but they didn't take this person down right away.
"Damocles" makes good sense. A policeman who was 15 yards from the major while he was still shooting just now said on CNN that the shooter was very calm in appearance.
He may indeed have been threatening with the .357 while reloading the .57 semi-auto. Maybe with that size round - .57 - the magazine might hold 20. I am familiar with revolvers and semi-autos. I have not seen a FN .57 cal. "cop killer." This is apparently a high penetration round. Multiple people could have been rounded by the same bullet. But they say that over 100 shots were fired by this army psychiatrist major - based on shell casings.
Correction - that's 5.7 mm not .57 cal. - a huge difference in bullet size. I should have edited better. I've never seen one these 5.7 mm semi-automatics. There must be a large explosive charge and high muzzle velocity.
I guess I somewhat expect that at least a group of 300 trained young solders would automatically charge en masse to minimize casualties.
"million$.." has an excellent analysis.
Hindsight is 20/20. The people who rebelled on the downed 9/11/01 airliner had time to realize it was take the risk or die anyway.
Seems like if everyone hit the deck when the shooting started, assessed the situation in less than one minute, gauged the reloading interval, then communicated a concerted plan of attack to the nearest soldiers for a rush, some casualties may have been averted. Resolute action under fire. Isn't that part of army training? These were not civilians or college students. Maybe war is a push button affair these days and no one really learns wrestling or hand to hand combat skills. For one man to take out 51 highly trained fighting men and women just seems strange. These days, it seems we should expect crazed gunmen attacks anywhere - from high schools to colleges to high rise NY office buildings. Why should a combat army post not expect an attack? We might all think about what we would do in such an instance. Plan ahead.
Good answer "icabod" - I suspect everyone may have been running around in disorder and confusion - pushing and shoving in panic - waiting for a civilian police person with a gun to save them. That would be a normal human reaction. I might do the same. I hope I would not, but no one ever knows until it happens. We should all anticipate this insanity. It happened in my home town when I was 15, and the gunman was driving around shooting people. We at home had rifles at the ready watching for him to come by. Of course being fore-warned and fore-armed is quite a different scenario from the Fort Hood episode.