Stop Making Assumptions. The Fort Hood Shooter was NOT a combat vet with PTSD.
USA Today photo
I wish people would stop assuming combat-related PTSD every time some veteran commits a violent crime. Veterans are representative of the country they serve; some are sterling citizens, some are rotten bags of snail crap. I personally am not aware of a single active shooter who had combat-related PTSD.
Cho, the Virginia Tech murderer, never served in the military.
The Sikh Temple murderer was a peacetime Army vet.
James Huberty from the San Ysidro McDonald’s was never military.
George Hennard at Luby’s was a former Merchant Marine who never saw combat.
The Columbine shooters were high school kids.
The Sandy Hook shooter was never military.
Hassan from the 2009 Fort Hood shooting never served in combat.
The Gabrielle Giffords shooter was never military.
James Holmes from the Aurora theater was never military.
Charles Whitman from the UT Tower shooting was a Marine who never saw combat.
Aaron Alexis from the Washington Navy Yard was a Navy veteran who never saw combat.
Ivan Lopez, Yesterday’s Fort Hood shooter, apparently never served in combat. Even if he had, that wouldn’t make him murder innocent people.
I can’t stress this enough. Lopez murdered people because he was a murderer, not because he was a combat vet. He wasn’t a combat vet. He didn’t murder because he had PTSD. He hadn’t even been diagnosed with PTSD. There’s no indication thus far that he experienced trauma during his deployment. He was just a murderer. People need to stop excusing his actions, and stop seeing him as something he wasn’t.
RIP to those we lost yesterday. Best wishes to the wounded and all family members affected by this brutal, senseless crime.
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Filed under: Afghanistan, Iraq, Writing | 9 Comments
Tags: fort hood, ivan lopez, PTSD, veteran writers
chrishernandezauthor 
Very tense day..a friend of mine is an MP at Hood… luckily she was able to let everyone know she was ok, but at the time couldn’t say anything about what was going on. Very tragic that this happened again…
The whole thing just absolutely sucks. Glad your friend is okay, Scot.
The media writes stories.
Sometimes, if the planets align, what the media writes corresponds in some vague way to actual events in real time and space, but it’s more often a painting of a unicorn someone claimed they saw. With flames coming out.
Once it became apparent this wasn’t an Islamic jihadi, and therefore just another case of “workplace violence”, the only thing they have left in their bag of “everyone in the military is a crazy killer” is PTSD, even if the closest the shooter got to SWAsia was while playing a game of Risk in the barracks one weekend.
If they get the rank and branch of service right both on the same day, it’s generally a minor miracle.
But it’s nice to see that whole Gun Free Zone thing is working out so well, yet again, for only about the 953rd time.
If just one post commander issued orders that all troops would carry locked and loaded as if they were in-country in A-stan, and so much as one of these weeds was shredded by five hundred incoming rounds when he tried to go all postal, that would be the last shooting on a military post this century, except for annual range quals.
A senator from California, won’t name her, said: “all veterans are mentally ill and should not own a firearm” or words to that effect. So before any of us shoot off our mouths and make up our minds, why don’t we look at all facts and allow only facts as a guiding light.
Can you provide the actual source of that quote?
No, he cannot, because there is not one. What she DID say is here: http://www.factcheck.org/2013/04/twisting-feinsteins-words-on-military-vets/
She still is a complete and utter stupid and remorseless c u next Tuesday, and thinkw that PTSD is a new phenomenon.
Unfortunately, then, the CO of Ft Hood must have been misinformed. I watched a televised press conference, from the evening of the shooting, where he stated that the shooter was “in treatment” and while was not officially diagnosed with PTSD was under evaluation for that condition. This implied that he had some time “in country”, while truthfully not actually saying so.
It was the first (and truthfully) the only thing I saw relating to the shooting, but if a person saw only this then they would not necessarily be making any assumptions.
Yes and neither was Charles Whitman.
Charles Whitman was mentioned in the essay. Not sure I understand your comment.