Fort Hood shooting

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skippy1729

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Much has been written about this but I haven't been able to find anything on hearing damage to the shooter or any of the survivors. It was done indoors with a 5.7x28 FN FiveseveN pistol which is very loud.

Anyone know anything?

PS I think it insane that our military personnel cannot carry firearms on a military base.
 
There's a reason why soldiers can't carry on base, ND's.

Just because soldiers are trained, doesn't mean that they don't make mistakes.

My company caught battalion guard duty, dumba$$ got bored, started playing with his M16, BOOM!

There was an arse chewing heard all over the base!
 
Much has been written about this but I haven't been able to find anything on hearing damage to the shooter or any of the survivors. It was done indoors with a 5.7x28 FN FiveseveN pistol which is very loud.

Anyone know anything?
As mentioned by hso, anything written on that subject would be conjecture. Not sure what that would consist of anyway. "People who are subjected to very loud noises experience hearing loss". Not exactly new information there.

PS I think it insane that our military personnel cannot carry firearms on a military base.
For what it's worth, most military members have very minimal firearms training in general and the vast majority have zero handgun training. "Cannot" is maybe too strong of a word though. Plenty of guns are carried on military bases.
 
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Much has been written about this but I haven't been able to find anything on hearing damage to the shooter or any of the survivors. It was done indoors with a 5.7x28 FN FiveseveN pistol which is very loud.

Anyone know anything?

PS I think it insane that our military personnel cannot carry firearms on a military base.
I believe the exact firearms on base policy is set by each base commander- I could be wrong or that may have changed.
When my buddy would pull gate duty at McDill AFB, he was given an empty Beretta and a cell phone. There were loaded magazines in a lockbox in the guard shack, but no one present usually had a key. If anything serious happened, they were supposed to dial 911......

Just recently, the new CO of the USS Blue Ridge made a PR splash by pulling a guard duty watch on deck in the hot sun. While I applaud the concept, the pics released by the Navy clearly showed him carrying an M4 with an empty PMAG window mag in it, lol.
 
On Carswell in Fort Worth the navy's range has bullet holes every where, chunks blasted out of the concrete floor behind the firing line, in the ceiling, at the back of the range, bullet holes all over the shooting stalls. It's probably safe to say when the navy is shooting about 99.9% of the bullets end up hitting the back stop.
The navy probably shouldn't be allowed to have guns smaller than 20mm.
 
On Carswell in Fort Worth the navy's range has bullet holes every where, chunks blasted out of the concrete floor behind the firing line, in the ceiling, at the back of the range, bullet holes all over the shooting stalls. It's probably safe to say when the navy is shooting about 99.9% of the bullets end up hitting the back stop.
The navy probably shouldn't be allowed to have guns smaller than 20mm.

Most cops are bad shots too.
 
On Carswell in Fort Worth the navy's range has bullet holes every where, chunks blasted out of the concrete floor behind the firing line, in the ceiling, at the back of the range, bullet holes all over the shooting stalls.

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I know the feeling! :rofl:

It's like, WT_ do I even come here! :eek:
 
Between 1975 and 1995 people would be amazed how many illegal guns were on US Navel Base's especially in the barracks.

What do you mean by this? Personal weapons brought into the barracks, or weapons from the armories that were carried into the barracks against protocol that no body cared to say anything?
 
The Army I served in 1967-1971 was a very ungun outfit, small arms training and range time were given short shrift, I knew only one NCO who was a gun guy. I arrived in Germany in June of 1970, starting in August we stopped taking firearms on guard duty. On another board one veteran said at his base in Germany in 1983 or so, at one guard post there were 2 5-round magazines in a lock and chained box, the key was with the Brigade Duty Officer-1.5 miles away. On that same board another veteran described an incident at Fort Knox in the 70s where 2 Basic Trainees were put on guard duty with weapons but no ammunition-"The commander of the relief found them roughed up, tied up-the weapons were not recovered."
 
It is true - a risk analysis of arming everyone in the military all the time -- when not in actual combat or high threat situations -- would have to consider 1. lives it would save, versus, 2. lives that would be lost from NDs or other things. There would also be a huge training burden to ensure everyone had the basics on using a pistol -- most soldiers are issued rifles, not pistols -- and then there would be the issue of what sort of weapons would be suitable, who would provide them, who would provide the ammo, who would check up on all of that...

When there is some sort of need for a weapon (but not a combat situation) the military is prone, for good reason, to arm only selected personnel, like the staff duty officer (SDO), the staff duty NCO (SDNCO), people actually on guard duty, etc. Back in the day, the Pay Officer would have a handgun, carrying that cash payroll around. The MPs and gate guards should always have live ammo and I'd bet they generally do now-a-days.

I had personal knowledge of five or six NDs while in the military, almost all from horsing around. One of them resulted in a death by someone -- a SF weapons sergeant -- who demonstrated to his tent-mate that "see, it's empty" when it wasn't. One of them involved me cleaning the weapon I loaned to a visiting fireman (a captain) from theater who wanted to go outside the wire and needed a weapon, so I let him have mine, and then he put a round into the clearing barrel outside Div HQ when he came back to the base. The MPs wrote him up. He sheepishly returned the pistol, dirty, and hastily got on his outbound flight. I made sure his home unit was faxed a copy of the MP report.

Guns in the barracks is really not a good idea. And not just because of NDs, but also because of the occasional fight that might get out of control, the occasional instance of someone having suicidal ideations, or just the fact that Joes lose stuff all the time.

The Israelis knew something when they decided that every citizen could carry a pistol but they must leave the chamber empty until they needed to put one in there. In the real world, and their world is pretty real, it curtails the quick-draw response a second or two but prevents a lot of NDs. I don't know if they still do it that way.
 
What do you mean by this? Personal weapons brought into the barracks, or weapons from the armories that were carried into the barracks against protocol that no body cared to say anything?

Personal weapons in the barracks they were everywhere and in one room they setup their reloading equipment.
 
Personal weapons in the barracks they were everywhere and in one room they setup their reloading equipment.

Bases generally require personally owned weapons to be stored in the individual's unit arms room if the service member resides in the barracks. Google "can I keep a weapon in the barracks at [insert name of base]" to check for official policy on the base in question. Not saying it doesn't happen, but I would guess it is a serious issue for a soldier to be caught with a personally owned weapon in the barracks.
 
Barracks were not very secure in my day, I can still see the posters warning against The Barracks Thief. Keeping weapons in wall and foot lockers..."Lead us not into temptation." In some of his final columns Jeff Cooper wrote that his correspondents were appalled by the careless weapons handling they saw in Iraq.
I suspect there's more ear damage from loud music than shooting. My understanding is that ear damage comes from prolonged exposure.
 
Much has been written about this but I haven't been able to find anything on hearing damage to the shooter or any of the survivors. It was done indoors with a 5.7x28 FN FiveseveN pistol which is very loud.

Anyone know anything?

PS I think it insane that our military personnel cannot carry firearms on a military base.

Much has been written on many gun battles, like the Miami-FBI shootout, for example. Unless you are in the hearing profession, chances are you don't care one iota if any of the participants had any hearing loss. I am 100% certain that no audiologists or the military did any sort of systematic testing prior to and then after said shooting (noted previously), in order to ascertain hearing loss of the survivors for this one incident.

If they had not tested the victims immediately prior to the shooting, then any hearing loss may be attributable to other factors outside of the testing parameters. For example, how many of the people that were involved are also involved in operating heavy machinery, drive large trucks, drive tanks, fly helicopters, ride in helicopters, forgot their ear protection during the last exercise, etc. between the time of their last test and the shooting? How many have been in combat? You can't apply any hearing records from when the people entered the military because too much time has elapsed between the time of the test and the shooting. There just isn't any control over the parameters of the test subjects for the time between when they entered the military and when they were involved in this shooting. So there will be no report on the hearing loss of soldiers (and civilians) from this incident. If somebody did attempt such a report, the results would be dubious.

Short of a study for which people volunteered, any individuals having their hearing tested outside of the military likely will not have their information available and it will be Hipaa protected.

Only part of the Fort Hood shooting was indoors.

As for not being able to carry on base, the military has a long history in developing its program. It isn't just stateside, either. I have known several folks, in theater, but not deployed to combat who had their military issue weapons taken from them until which time they were deployed to combat. This practice has gone on for many decades.

The military does not trust its people to be responsible enough to the point that at least stateside, many (most?, all?) of the bases (like Fort Hood) are not protected by the military, but by non-military police, as who crippled the Fort Hood Shooter. At Fort Hood, the police would be DACP (Department of the Army Civilian Police). For the Navy, United States Department of the Navy Police. For the Marines, United States Marine Corps Civilian Police, etc.
 
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I have worked i. 2 jobs where we were under an annual hearing conservation program, and I had 4 tests over a 3 year period. These test results were kept by the employer for a period of time and were used to determine how much hearing damage occurred a d to which employees.

I also understand the difference between impulse noise and steady state noise, and BOTH will affect your long term hearing. I also bet there is more damage from loud music and other activities like lawn care than gunshots in the average military member.

I spent 3 years working on board Naval Sub Base Kings Bay and the civilian gate guards were armed with live ammo, as were the Navy MP / SP personnel. We also had Marines who were armed, but they stayed in their area and had to turn in their ammo before they left the area.

Personal weapons were very tightly regulated on base by policy. There were also a number of fights between the young testosterone field men. Quite a few fights turned ugly and involved improvised weapons. I am afraid to think of what would happen with firearms and ammo being readily available to them.
 
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