On Wednesday at Fort Hood, Texas shots rang out once again with our soldiers in the crosshairs. This time three people died and 16 were wounded by the accused gunman; Specialist Ivan Lopez who was an Iraq veteran who was being treated for an unconfirmed Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and is being described by the Mainstream Media (MSM) as suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Now please understand there are many reasons that I am calling out the mention of his unconfirmed injury and diagnosis of PTSD-and they are very good ones.

First of all not all who suffer TBI are doomed to be killers, or even violent-I sustained a TBI in a rear-end collison three years ago and though it caused permanent repercussions on my eyesight and ability to recall things when I am tired or stressed it did not cause me to become violent. This simply put me in the roughly 2% of adults in the USA and Canada who live with lifelong side effects of TBI. The danger comes when the TBI aftermath can lead to post TBI depression. Things like inappropriate or missed diagnosis,  and lack of follow up therapies can all be precipitating factors. Specialist Lopez’s TBI has yet to be medically confirmed so I remain dubious as to whether or not he had suffered a TBI during his time in Iraq since he was present largely during the drawdown in that region.

Then there is the fact that most soldiers who suffer from PTSD are non-violent in the expression of the disorder. Specialist Lopez had not received a confirmed diagnosis of PTSD according to the sources I have been able to locate prior to this writing. The majority of soldiers who suffer from PTSD symptoms suffer in silence, and usually turn their anguish inside as opposed to striking out against others in violent ways-like mass shootings.

And finally there are two massive 4,000 gorrillas in the room that the Army has not addressed since the original Ft. Hood massacre in 2009 that may, or may not have played into Wednesday’s shooting. I think we can all agree what at least one of those big, hairy apes is-Islamic radicalism. So far, investigators have not turned up anything that would indicate that Specialist Lopez had become radicalized during his time in the Middle East. I take no comfort in that since the Army clearly knew that Major Nidal Hassan was a radical Islamist (you would think that the SOA-“Soldier of Allah” printed on his official Army business card would be a red flag). The Army also failed in their official reporting after the original Ft. Hood shooting by ensuring that the words “radial”, “Islamist” or “terrorist” never showed up in the official report.

The second massive gorilla in the room is the inability of our soldiers to carry sidearms on post in order to protect themselves from incidents like the ones executed by Hassan in 2009, the attack at the Navy Yard last summer and then by Lopez this week at Fort Hood.  Following the shooting in the Navy Yard last summer, one Representative Stockman (R) of Texas-big shock, huh?-introduced the Safe Military Bases Act or HR3199. This act would have allowed service members and Federal civilians to carry personal firearms on post and be able to defend themselves, and their colleagues, from attacks like the one on Wednesday. Yes, that is right-it would allow our soldiers, who are trained in the use of firearms, to carry them on a Federal installation-I am still struggling with why this is a foreign concept. Stockman said the following when quesitoned about the intent of the bill:

“Our disarmed military bases are vulnerable targets for terrorists, as we saw in Fort Hood and the Navy Yard,” he said in a statement. “Despite that, soldiers trained to use guns cannot carry on base. The result is two mass killings where defenseless soldiers had to watch as their friends were murdered.”

“Saving lives by allowing trained soldiers to carry firearms should be an easy fix,” Stockman said. “No reasonable person can oppose that.”

Even though this sounds completely reasonable to most logical human beings, this bill apparently never made it out of the committee it was referred to in September of last year. Perhaps it will take even more blood spilled by those who defend our nation on military installations across the country to get Congress and the current Administration to perk up and do something about repealing the 20 year old prohibition on soldiers carrying personal firearms on posts.

No, I doubt even that would help.