Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Nuclear1 on November 06, 2009, 12:37:34 am
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http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/05/texas.fort.hood.shootings/index.html
(CNN) -- A solider suspected of fatally shooting 12 and wounding 31 at Fort Hood in Texas on Thursday is not dead as previously reported by the military, the base's commander said Thursday evening.
A civilian officer who was wounded in the incident shot the suspect, who is "in custody and in stable condition," Army Lt. Gen. Robert Cone told reporters.
"Preliminary reports indicate there was a single shooter that was shot multiple times at the scene," Cone said at a news conference. "However, he was not killed as previously reported."
The suspect, identified as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, opened fire at a military processing center at Fort Hood around 1:30 p.m., Cone said.
Well...this sucks.
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Been following this, it's pretty horrific, but I'm unwilling to jump to conclusions at the moment. My condolences to the families of those involved :(
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There's really nothing worse than knowing you're vulnerable even when you're stateside and not deployed. I half-expected to have a difficult time getting back on base today (I was downtown when it happened). Hood itself was locked down and a fair number of installations in Texas ramped up security.
Interesting points about the suspect himself though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Hood_shooting#Hasan
Major Nidal Malik Hasan, age 39, was born in Virginia to parents who immigrated to the US from Jordan. He served as an army psychiatrist, who had transferred to Fort Hood in July from Washington's Walter Reed Medical Center. Prior to being transferred, he had received a poor performance evaluation. He had special training in shooting.
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According to Hasan's aunt, he had sought for several years to receive a discharge, due to harassment relating to his religion, Islam. An army spokesman could not confirm the aunt's statement. Hasan had come to the attention of federal authorities at least six months before the attacks because of internet postings he may have made discussing suicide bombings and other threats. However, it remains unclear that he was the author of the posts, and no official investigation was opened.
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Hasan was about to be deployed, whether to Iraq or Afghanistan is unclear, on November 28. According to Jeff Sadoski, spokesperson of U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, "Hasan was upset about his deployment". Hasan's cousin, Nader Hasan, a lawyer in Virginia, said that Nidal Hasan turned against the wars after hearing the stories of those who came back from Afghanistan and Iraq. Noel Hamad said, however, that the family did not know he was being sent to Iraq. "He didn't tell us he was going to deploy," she said.
According to his cousin, Nidal Hasan was a practicing Muslim who had become more devout after the deaths of his parents in 1998 and 2001. However, his cousin does not recall him ever expressing any radical or anti-American views. The cousin added that Hasan had been harassed by his Army colleagues because of his Middle Eastern ethnicity. Said the cousin, "He was dealing with some harassment from his military colleagues. I don’t think he’s ever been disenchanted with the military. It was the harassment. He hired a military attorney to try to have the issue resolved, pay back the government, to get out of the military. He was at the end of trying everything."
According to retired Colonel Terry Lee, "He said maybe Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor. At first we thought he meant help the armed forces, but apparently that wasn't the case. Other times he would make comments we shouldn't be in the war in the first place."
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Yes, the name kind of gave away the angle most people are going to be looking at, especially so hot on the heels of the shooting of UK soldiers in a very similar manner in Afghanistan. I'm hoping it's not, not because of any political or social views, but because all it will serve to do is harm Muslims in the USA in general, there are people who would love to point fingers at them and claim they are all 'timebombs' waiting to go off.
I don't doubt that idiots like O'Reilly won't be long in pointing out that his last name sounds the same as Obamas middle name... :(
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Oh, I bet Glenn Beck has it already set for his conspiracy radio hour tomorrow. O'Reilly's just going to be the one who spends his whole television hour calling for Hasan's death, and then spend the next six months carrying out a personal crusade against Muslim Americans.
I mean, really, they should've seen something happening, albeit maybe not this tragic. They spent months at a time beating equal opportunity and tolerance lessons into our heads coming out of basic, so why, when a devout Muslim reports being harrassed and mistreated because of his ethnicity, do they not do a damned thing about it? The Army's got plenty of blood on its hands here too.
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I'll tell you this, if he so much as breathes the words 'Internment Camps' or anything of that ilk, I think I will weep for the US.
I think some Americans don't realise the depth of offense that people take when their religion is insulted, which is quite ironic in a way, since they are often to people who take the most offence when their own religion is insulted :(
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Damn... I caught the end of this on the radio, didn't realize the guy was muslim.
This isn't going to go down well, is it?
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And, no offence to the Texans here, but Texas is probably the last place in the US that you want even larger amounts of hostility towards Muslims, from what I understand of the state (which, I'll admit, may be wrong or over-stereotyped), there's a certain reputation for vigilante action from certain quarters.
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The only time this could've been worse was right after 9/11. Now we've got racists crawling out of their holes screaming about Obama's birth certificate, the return of the militia movement, questions about border security, and people's 24-induced paranoia of sleeper cells to fuel the fire. I would not want to a Muslim living anywhere near a red county right now, especially in the breeding-ground of vigilantes that is Texas.
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This to me sounds more like a man who was at the end of his rope somehow, it feels like an act of desperation. That his CO, whether it was his direct superior or the base commander should have, but didn't, handle the insults or bad mouthing or outright descrimination, from the sound of it it was hurting unit cohesion if nothing else. It shouldn't have happened. Well probably see some officers brought up on dereliction of duty or something like that before this is over. An officer's job isn't just to give orders, it's to take care of the men under his command. It's the sign of a bad commander if his subordinates don't trust him enough to come to him with this sort of issue.
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Glenn Beck is out due to surgery apparently. Dunno how long you recovery from an appendectomy.
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My condolences to those involved
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I'll tell you this, if he so much as breathes the words 'Internment Camps' or anything of that ilk, I think I will weep for the US.
I'll start when they actually do start shifting people to Internment Camps. If Glenn Beck says it then we can ignore him.
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I'll tell you this, if he so much as breathes the words 'Internment Camps' or anything of that ilk, I think I will weep for the US.
I'll start when they actually do start shifting people to Internment Camps. If Glenn Beck says it then we can ignore him.
Internment Camps? Like WW2 or The Siege? Not that I think we would never do it, but I think it would take a large scale campaign against civilian targets by an organization. From what I've seen so far this was a one man incident, unless they dig up connections to an terrorist organization then this isn't much different then an office park shooting.
Now if there was a dedicated operation blowing up malls, schools, buses etc. throughout the country then I think you would find Internment Camps would be considered. Not that I am advocating it as a solution mind you, just that I believe a campaign of small scale operations against soft targets across the country would certainly drive the populace into thinking it is an acceptable measure.
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You don't see a guy randomly kill 12 people and then get captured alive very often. Kind of impressive on their part.
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Comes less than a week after that other incident in Afghanistan... In fact when I heard it on the radio I thought they were talking about the same incident at first...
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I haven't posted here in years, but I was just browsing through and thought I would say something.
And, no offence to the Texans here, but Texas is probably the last place in the US that you want even larger amounts of hostility towards Muslims, from what I understand of the state (which, I'll admit, may be wrong or over-stereotyped), there's a certain reputation for vigilante action from certain quarters.
Over-stereotyped would be correct.
I would not want to a Muslim living anywhere near a red county right now, especially in the breeding-ground of vigilantes that is Texas.
This is an ignorant statement.
This to me sounds more like a man who was at the end of his rope somehow, it feels like an act of desperation. That his CO, whether it was his direct superior or the base commander should have, but didn't, handle the insults or bad mouthing or outright descrimination, from the sound of it it was hurting unit cohesion if nothing else. It shouldn't have happened. Well probably see some officers brought up on dereliction of duty or something like that before this is over. An officer's job isn't just to give orders, it's to take care of the men under his command. It's the sign of a bad commander if his subordinates don't trust him enough to come to him with this sort of issue.
It is always a tragedy when there is descrimination within the ranks of our soldiers. Even when it is unintentional. If your chain of command fails you then you can always file an EO complaint through IG. I have never seen an equaI oppritunity complaint that was not taken seriously by IG. If he filed one, then somebody is definately at fault for not investigating it throughly if racial/religious discrimination was his motive. I am curious to see what the investigation comes up with. He clearly was emotionally distrought over something, but there could be a number of reasons why. Above all else he is a Major, a field grade officer, and psychiatrist. Someone whose job was to provide care for soldiers, many with PTSD. Now he is nothing but a murderer. I have no sympathy for the guy no matter what his reasons are. He killed one of our Battalion's soldiers in that incident right across the street from our rear detachment head quarters. The rest of the Battalion is currently in Iraq, to include myself. We have had more soldiers killed while on their 2 week leave or on rear detachment than we have in the past 11 months here in Iraq due to this, motorcycles, and DWI.
On a legal note. The Army has two options here. They can go through the state of Texas or UCMJ for prosecution. Both have capital punishment, but I think this should be done through UCMJ. It was on a Fort Hood and it was soldier on soldier.
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The concern is, will the American public see it that way? Will they take it simply as the act of one man who was obviously unstable, or will they see his religion as his motive, instead of being the cause of his motive? (Assuming, of course, that initial thoughts regarding his motive are accurate).
I have used the argument that 'the percentage of nerds who live in their parents cellar is probably the same as the percentage of Texans who live in a gun-lined shelter, i.e. far, far less than people seem to think' so I can accept that there was over-stereotyping there, hope no offense was taken at that :)
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It has begun.
Fox news are claiming he shouted 'Allah Akbar' before opening fire, something unconfirmed by any other news outlet, or the base, and they are claiming he made radical Internet postings when even the FBI said that are still trying to confirm they are the same person...
Good old witch-burning Fox...
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there was some news coverage about this on tv at dinner last night.
it was extremely annoying. Instead of "there was a shooting today at a military base, we will report back with details as they come in" there was this whole google maps bull**** where they were zooming in on buildings and telling us all sorts of unrelated details about the base, and when they ran out of that, instead of doing the "report back with details as they come in" they started bringing in "experts" and doing all this speculation, and repeating the stuff they had already said and going on and on and on about the same thing with not new information for like half an hour at least.
****ing Wolf Blitzer.
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At least we can count on the accurate news coverage from the news services. AP reported that a single gun was used. A 5.7 cal. automatic pistol. Its a wonder he was able to kill any one since that would be a .057" bullet. He probably used pencil lead to reload.
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so one mental health worker killed a bunch of professional soldiers with a single pistol?
more details as we get them.
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At least we can count on the accurate news coverage from the news services. AP reported that a single gun was used. A 5.7 cal. automatic pistol. Its a wonder he was able to kill any one since that would be a .057" bullet. He probably used pencil lead to reload.
Gauss flechettes
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It has begun.
Fox news are claiming he shouted 'Allah Akbar' before opening fire, something unconfirmed by any other news outlet, or the base, and they are claiming he made radical Internet postings when even the FBI said that are still trying to confirm they are the same person...
Good old witch-burning Fox...
Not surprised...
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Condolences of course to those in need.
No other comments from me.
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At least we can count on the accurate news coverage from the news services. AP reported that a single gun was used. A 5.7 cal. automatic pistol. Its a wonder he was able to kill any one since that would be a .057" bullet. He probably used pencil lead to reload.
Ugh, yeah. It was a Five-seveN I heard. That's 5.7 millimeters Associated Press. :rolleyes:
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it's fun watching all the non-Americans flipping out about how we are going to open internment camps.
all the right is going to do is use this as justification for using religion as part of the screening process. the most they will get is using it as a talking point toward that end. this will do nothing but make average Americans more skeptical of people who hold to academic world views, bias against Muslims will not go up much (because it's already about as high as it's going to get). now there is the possibility that in a country of 300 million this might cause one or two morons who were going to do something at some point to act now, but other than that this situation will be all but forgotten within the next two months. unless there does turn out to be some connection to some terrorist group, but that doesn't seem likely.
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If it is indeed true that he shouted Allah Ackbar while he was shooting people up, I think it underscores the danger of religious ideology. Like John Lenon said "Imagine no religion."
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If it is indeed true that he shouted Allah Ackbar while he was shooting people up, I think it underscores the danger of religious ideology. Like John Lenon said "Imagine no religion."
Yes, because one wacko with obvious underlying psychological issues should be held as representative of every religious person on the planet! Brilliant, Watson!
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Being a homicidal loon can arise from ideology of any sort.
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You know what? Just to be safe, I'm not teasing Turambar about being a dirty muzzie towelhead sandNWORD anymore.
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I am not entirely comfortable with that.
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Yeah, I will prolly forget in like two hours and check his backpack for water bottle bombs.
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I mean with the use of that speech.
But then I think maybe I'm just being overly anal and can't decide whether to yell at you. I want to avoid double standards here.
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I dont generally speaking. I get a little twinge in my neck whenever I use a racial slur. :[
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I don't think his ideology provided anything but an excuse, to be honest. He was not by all reports a particularly devout or even practicing Muslim. As a pyschatrist working for the military, and apparently a good one considering he's not a lieutenant attached to a divisional medical staff but a major working at the primary center for deploying soldiers, his workload would have been considerably more demanding than is usually expected of such people. A great deal rides on your success or failure when you minster to the mental health of people with guns, and you will be assigned more difficult work based on your apparent competence. Perhaps he could not handle the load and lost it himself; perhaps he could not stand the thought of experiencing what damaged so many of those who came before him; perhaps he was damaged in turn, his faith in humanity lost by his contact with the depths it can sink to. None of these things are exactly unknown with pyschatric professionals.
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I would not want to a Muslim living anywhere near a red county right now, especially in the breeding-ground of vigilantes that is Texas.
This is an ignorant statement.
Well, I was born in Indiana, lived most of my life there, lived outside Raleigh for two years, lived in San Angelo and San Antonio for a year, and now I live outside Omaha. Trust me, there are nuts everywhere, but they're just so much more vocal and violent in the red states.
Hate crimes against Middle Easterners and those perceived to be Middle Eastern or Muslim went up drastically after 9/11 (http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=127fe2880e48951b564ac2f3e171242e), from only barely 400 being in reported in 2001 before the attacks, to nearly 2000 in 2005. Texas, Virginia, and Florida combined accounted for 21% of those hate crimes.
So when a man of Middle Eastern heritage goes off on a rampage and kills 13 people, several of them soldiers, in the heart of Texas, and you have bull**** news organizations like Fox bent on twisting the story to make it seem like it's the beginning of a new wave of terrorist attacks on American soil, what the **** do you think is going to happen?! People actually believe the **** they say on there! People with guns! People with racist tendencies!
So stop this goddamn kneejerk defense of the red states who need no defending and start worrying about the Americans who are going to have to suffer the backlash of this one nutjob at the hands of their fellow citizens!
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"...ks, to nearly . Tex..."
you forgot something I think.
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Whoops, looks like I did. Edited. Thanks for the catch.
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I have used the argument that 'the percentage of nerds who live in their parents cellar is probably the same as the percentage of Texans who live in a gun-lined shelter, i.e. far, far less than people seem to think' so I can accept that there was over-stereotyping there, hope no offense was taken at that :)
None taken. It would take something a little more than that to offend me.
You should go down to Austin. You might enjoy it. :)
Well, I was born in Indiana, lived most of my life there, lived outside Raleigh for two years, lived in San Angelo and San Antonio for a year, and now I live outside Omaha. Trust me, there are nuts everywhere, but they're just so much more vocal and violent in the red states.
Hate crimes against Middle Easterners and those perceived to be Middle Eastern or Muslim went up drastically after 9/11 (http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=127fe2880e48951b564ac2f3e171242e), from only barely 400 being in reported in 2001 before the attacks, to nearly . Texas, Virginia, and Florida combined accounted for 21% of those hate crimes.
So when a man of Middle Eastern heritage goes off on a rampage and kills 13 people, several of them soldiers, in the heart of Texas, and you have bull**** news organizations like Fox bent on twisting the story to make it seem like it's the beginning of a new wave of terrorist attacks on American soil, what the **** do you think is going to happen?! People actually believe the **** they say on there! People with guns! People with racist tendencies!
So stop this goddamn kneejerk defense of the red states who need no defending and start worrying about the Americans who are going to have to suffer the backlash of this one nutjob at the hands of their fellow citizens!
As you stated. There are nuts everywhere. I am not defending a "red" state out of a knee-jerk reaction. You made an ignorant remark about my home.
"It also found that 10 states accounted for nearly four out of five civil rights-related complaints. In descending order, they were California (19 percent); Illinois (14 percent); New York (9 percent); Texas (8 percent); Virginia (7 percent); Florida (6 percent); District of Columbia (5 percent); Maryland (4 percent); Ohio and New Jersey (4 percent)."
California is not a "red" state. It is the most populated state followed by Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois to finish up the top five. It would be only natural to see California, Texas, and New York to be in the top three based on number of incidents because they have more population. Instead Texas is at number 4. I would be most concerned with DC out of those ten. If you want to skew numbers and make political statements based off your article then one could say. California, New York, and Illinois make up 42%. :)
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also ironic:
"I hope this doesn't cause all the people in the red states to go on racist killing sprees"
implying generalization about red states being filled with nothing but people who live by generalizations.
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There aren't really any such thing as 'red states' or 'blue states' anyway - it tends towards various shades of bruise purple.
If Nuclear1 can demonstrate statistically that there were significantly more anti-Muslim hate crimes per capita in Texas than in other states, then he may have a point.
You're certainly right, though, that there are nuts everywhere.
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It's interesting that the news services are only reporting concerns by Muslims in California, Illinois, Maryland and Washington D.C. about a backlash.
Of course maybe I should be concerned about a backlash against engineers since the guy in Florida was an engineer and I do live in Illinois. Then again he didn't yell PEs are great as he shot people.
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Maryland? We're like bluest of blue here?
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Yes but Maryland makes sense because he used to live there. Texas would make sense because that's where it occured. But Texas wasn't mentioned.
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I just want to point out this event to all those who claim that allowing guns to be carried on campus would have averted the Virginia Tech massacre.
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I just want to point out this event to all those who claim that allowing guns to be carried on campus would have averted the Virginia Tech massacre.
I'd just like to point out the stupidity of that statement considering that no armed personnel were there until the MPs/civilian police responded.
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Seriously. Personnel on domestic bases (and all non-warzone bases, I'd imagine) don't generally carry firearms in the first place. As sad as it may seem, fewer soldiers probably would have died had this taken place on a base within Iraq.
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But they could. If guns were allowed on college campuses, how many kids would actually be wandering around armed? Tch.
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But they could. If guns were allowed on college campuses, how many kids would actually be wandering around armed? Tch.
No, they can't. The military doesn't let you carry around an assault rifle for any old reason because they worry about this sort of thing.
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Wasn't he using two pistols or something like that?
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Unless you absolutely require it for your job or you're doing training on it, a weapon is always locked up in the armory on base.
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No, they can't. The military doesn't let you carry around an assault rifle for any old reason because they worry about this sort of thing.
They also worry about weapons, um, falling off the back of trucks at the same time a few hundred dollars falls into the NCO's wallet. Or something.
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That too.
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Wasn't he using two pistols or something like that?
Two handguns yes. They were civilian guns apparently... not military issue.
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At least we can count on the accurate news coverage from the news services. AP reported that a single gun was used. A 5.7 cal. automatic pistol. Its a wonder he was able to kill any one since that would be a .057" bullet. He probably used pencil lead to reload.
WTF you on? The P90 and Five Seven use 5.7x28mm ammo. Both of these weapons are VERY deadly.
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At least we can count on the accurate news coverage from the news services. AP reported that a single gun was used. A 5.7 cal. automatic pistol. Its a wonder he was able to kill any one since that would be a .057" bullet. He probably used pencil lead to reload.
WTF you on? The P90 and Five Seven use 5.7x28mm ammo. Both of these weapons are VERY deadly.
The news report did not say 5.7 mm which is about 22.5 calibre, it said 5.7 calibre which would be about 1.44mm. 1.44mm is about the diameter of drafting pencil lead. I was pointing out the inaccuracy of the news report. Obviously you did not read closely.
You are right about the 5.7x28mm. He was probably using a Five-SeveN.
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At least we can count on the accurate news coverage from the news services. AP reported that a single gun was used. A 5.7 cal. automatic pistol. Its a wonder he was able to kill any one since that would be a .057" bullet. He probably used pencil lead to reload.
WTF you on? The P90 and Five Seven use 5.7x28mm ammo. Both of these weapons are VERY deadly.
Haha, dude. Caliber =! mm. It's as absurd as saying the P90 uses 5.7 inch ammo.
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He's awake too, by the way
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Somebody apparently leaked his last fitness report while he was serving at Walter Reed, within the military anyways. Marine LT who came in today had seen it, said the man had screwed up badly and was career-dead. It was either deployment or Bad Conduct Discharge.