From USA Today:

A law enforcement official who spoke to AP said Hasan, believed to be in his late 30s, was killed after opening fire at the base and was an Army mental health professional.

[link]

You know, so often when there's a mass shooting, there's a population that starts saying, "Well, if only everyone were armed, if you could carry guns on school campuses, this wouldn't be able to happen." But this happened on an Army base , where presumably everybody is both fricken armed and knows how to actually shoot the guns.

I wonder if MAJ Hassan worked at the SRP site. I am a little surprised the guy was a major and that he was working with other people.

But no one is armed on an Army base. All military weapons are locked up very tightly and you aren't allowed to bring personal weapons on post. I mean, you can sneak them on of course.

Having said that, this sort of thing is why Im glad we don't live on post.

Eta: I was responding to flea.

In better news, I finally have meat muffins in the oven! I think this is going to work out perfectly -- I microwaved a potato (microwave!), and then put it in the oven with the meat and brussels sprouts for 20 minutes.

I haven't cooked a real dinner in yonks.

MPs aren't armed on base?

ETA: Everything I know about Army bases that I didn't learn from Stephanie, I learned from watching MASH, so.

Well, the gate guards and police are armed. But regular sdiers rarely have access to their weapons and even then, they only get live ammunition at a range. So, there are actually very few people on a base with access to weapons and ammo. But of course everyone on the base (just about) knows how to shoot multiple weapons and they are fairly comfortable with guns in general.

Deployed it's different. Everyone in Iraq has a weapon almost all the time and they likely have ammo too.

Eta: I should add that doctors and chaplains don't do much weapons training, if any. It's very odd to me that the shooter was a doctor, an officer, and apparently conspired with others.

There was supposed to be a 5:45 press confernce, was/is there?

The local area news website I was just reading said MAJ Hasan was to be deployed.

Ion - the wind is blowing crazy and it just started raining - boo hiss weather.

For Billytea (and anyone else who needs to stop hitting refresh on the Ft Hood story) - baby echidnas.

I know! I've never been to Perth, maybe I should rectify that.