Completely offensive first thought about the Fort Hood shooting

[sabotabby]

Well, if only everyone carried a gun, these mass shootings would be—

Oh, wait.

Comments

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Clearly they should all be required to register their guns

[fengi.livejournal.com]

That was EXACTLY my first post idea.

Does this qualify me for Canadian citizenship?

[thebigbadbutch.livejournal.com]

They actually don't let soldiers carry their guns around for funzies on base. If a soldier has his own gun and lives on base it has to be checked in and out of the armory. Unless someone has business with a loaded gun they probably don't have one.

That being said I was also amazed someone managed to go on an army base and kill 12 people and live.

[mcpreacher.livejournal.com]

maybe they were doing training drills for unmanned bomber vehicles and everyone was caught off guard by the idea of being at risk

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Yes I thought they DID all carry guns! I can't believe people actually allow their children to grow up on a military base. It is horrific. I have a friend who grew up in RAF accommodation here and was beaten at school regularly as well as at home and is now an emotional wreck, although she does great work as a counsellor helping prostitutes who have crack addictions and is very amazing.
Nasty people, these army types. Still, the occasional shooting probably helps to keep them on their toes. It is what they are there and breeding for, after all. (Sorry - am never sensitive when it comes to army people. Their lives' purpose is to kill and be killed, so they have nothing to moan about, although I suppose they were hoping to get shot in Iraq or somewhere rather than Texas!)

[mcpreacher.livejournal.com]

a (wo?)man after my own heart

[simienwolf.livejournal.com]

Off topic, but what the heck is going on in that icon, and where is it from?

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

Some form for smoking, obviously...

[gethenian.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who grew up in RAF accommodation here and was beaten at school regularly as well as at home

That has NOTHING to do with being an army brat. That can and does happen to kids everywhere.

Plus? Have you ever been on an army base? Do you actually know ANY soldiers? Given the choice between hanging around Walter Reed and hanging around almost any part of DC, I'd pick Walter Reed every time. They're not "nasty people." They also don't join the army "hoping to get shot."

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I have quite a few army majors and soldiers in my family, or did until they died. The one left alive regrets joining and says that he would have become a conscientious objector over Iraq. I know a few other ex-servicemen locally who say the same, and who say they felt manipulated into joining up when they were teenagers. Of course in the U.S. there is a lot more poverty than in other Western countries, which probably encourages young people to join up because they feel they have no other way out of poverty. I didn't think people who join the army hope to get shot, but they must expect that if they go and attack people people will attack them back!
As for being beaten in schools, it was certainly not legal here except in church or army schools.

[gethenian.livejournal.com]

I may have misread you -- I thought you meant getting beaten UP in school, you know, by other students. I don't know about legality, but in private schools here there is a high tolerance for teachers and administration doing things to students that would make news headlines if it was done in public schools and anyone ever found out about it. They range from (all these I actually saw or had done to me) hair-pulling to locking children inside rooms and interrogating them about their parents' fidelity to one another to informing victims of ongoing sexual abuse that it was their form of "penance" and refusing to report it to any authority outside the school administration. I don't know about anyone ever getting beaten, but when 40% of the class of 2005 has spent time as inpatients in mental hospitals, I think anyone would agree they're doing something dangerously wrong with those children.

That statistic, incidentally, matches the percentage of the graduating class of several years ago at one of DC's largest public schools that tested as "functionally illiterate."

I don't know where you live, but the alternatives to army school may not have necessarily been any better.

I'm also a conscientious objector to Iraq. A number of the soldiers my sister and I know at Walter Reed disagree strongly with the war. They hate it. Especially knowing what it does to people, Walter Reed being the medical base where they send the wounded vets for rehab. Lord, if you get them started, they will go on for HOURS about what a mess it is and how we shouldn't be there. They were never there because they believe in the war. They were there either because it was the only viable option they had to improve their lives, or because they believe in protecting their country no matter how deep a hole it digs itself into.

They're good people over there, and I don't mean because if their politics. I don't care about their politics. They're fuckin' gentlemen in a way I had no idea real human males actually were outside of movies until I went over there.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

My cousin left the army as soon as he could and instead worked in rehab, helping soldiers who had lost limbs with physiotherapy. He now has Gulf War syndrome but the government doesn't recognise it, so he has been off work on and off for years until finally he managed to set up a business from home with his wife.
Sorry about the sounding like people deserve to be shot - I just get upset that such a huge deal is made of people whose livelihood is in death dying when so many people who do good die horribly and their communities and families get no support or sympathy.
Here there are plenty of alternatives to army life so people who join up tend to be those attracted by macho toys and violence. My cousin was just bullied into it by his father because he was expelled from school.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I suppose in Britain we have the whole guilt over empire thing, so "protecting their country" sounds nationalistic and insular, while the U.S. is still in the thick of it and people actually think of the army as for protection rather than assertion. Here the alternative to army school would have been comparative bliss. Only one in ten people are illiterate here! (Only!) There are relatively few situations in Britain where an army career would be the only alternative to strive to get a better life, thank goodness. I suppose that is why the army has such trouble recruiting!

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

You thing here just goes to show that "army types" are not necessarily nasty. It sure does attract certain pathological types, (so does teaching!) but that sounds like quite the generalization there.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Perhaps just very naive - it makes more sense to join the army if you belong to a neutral country which sends troops out only for peacekeeping or defence purposes, but not if you belong to a country with a record of starting wars.
I tend to generalise about teachers too. Horrible psychos, those present excepted!

[unemployia.livejournal.com]

i agree entirely, cept for the DC vs. Walter Reed part (because I dont' all the way understand it, and while not fond of DC have never been to Walter Reed), and I did grow up part of my life on army bases! It was very nice, very diverse. and yes, alot of solidiers are poor people striving to survive. its absolutely no use to just trash a bunch of folks like that.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

My first thought was "Hey, fewer people to shoot Iraqis." Shame about the teenager though.

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

The soldiers on the base indeed did not carry guns.

[rojonoir.livejournal.com]

I was confused by all the talk of this being the most horrifying thing ever, because I was kind of thinking the other recent news about the serial killer in Ohio who killed about as many people and where people in the neighborhood had been complaining about the stink of rotting corpses for years was more horrifying.

[rojonoir.livejournal.com]

The Nisour square massacre in Iraq was also more horrifying. And you know that the slaughter of 17 unarmed men, women, and children was serious because Blackwater was forced to change their name to something less pronounceable and almost lost their contract with the U.S. State Department.

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

I looked through your journal and ended up watching Larks on a String (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064994/).

How do I say this... I love you.

P.S. Did you end up watching the movies by Dusan Makavejev that you were planning on watching? Because from my experience, Sweet Story is awesome, but then I watched Mysteries of the Organism and never had the urge to watch any Makavejev since.

[rojonoir.livejournal.com]

Did I say something about Larks on a String? It looks good, but I don't remember anything about it.

I liked Mysteries of the Organism, and I've seen some others by him - most didn't really seem like "good movies", but I still enjoyed them either for their chaotic dreamlike surrealism or for bits and pieces that were great and unlike anything I've seen in other movies.

I especially liked Montenegro:

[charlie-the-ed.livejournal.com]

"Completely offensive first thought"s

are fucking awesome.