Update:
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cop-killer-gun-thought-ft-hood-shooting/story?id=9019521
I'm not going to quote the article, because it has many inaccuracies about the capabilities of the guns involved (such as one of them being a 'cop-killer gun'), but basically they do answer my question of how did he fire more than 100 rounds at close range, wound so many people and yet not kill more or do more damage, especially since reports have it that nobody in the building was wearing armor.
Turns out the guy had an FN FiveSeveN 5.7x28 pistol and a Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum revolver. The .357 is a manstopper for certain, but it's slow to fire and even slower to reload. The FiveSeveN was intended for use against armored personnel and it is known to have issues with overpenetration and causing little damage against unarmored personnel. Plus the armor-piercing ammunition is not available for civilian sale in the US, rendering it one of the more expensive and useless .22 class pistols on the market. From reports, it sounds like he used the FiveSeveN for most of his shooting, for which we can all be thankful. If he'd had a more conventionally-chambered pistol (say in 9mm), there would have been a lot more dead people.
Sometimes you have to give thanks for incompetence.
Edit: Just spotted Dogbert's reply.
Okay, and Nidal Malik Hasan's home country is....
... wait for it ...
So you're saying that if he turns out to be a terrorist, we'll turn him over to... us? Or are we considering Arlington, VA a separate country now? I fail to see how a policy of extraditing captured terrorists to their home countries applies to a
potential domestic terrorism case.
I'm saying that this indicates a pattern of handing over terrorists to 'civilian law enforcement'. If it continues, instead of leaving Hasan in a military prison to rot until his UCMJ-mandated execution, the administration would hand over Hasan to the civil authorities.
I would be very happy to be proven wrong, but this administration does have a pattern of behavior that makes this their probable course of action.
Oh no, I remember it. I just didn't think to bring it up because, y'know, they're not Al-Qaeda. Associates with != Is. I've associated with Seth Green before, but that doesn't mean right after this post is finished, I'm gonna go work on Robot Chicken.
Got a point there, but my point still stands - Middle Eastern terror organizations don't 'just' do suicide bombings. Even the Palestinians, who seemed to have no end of idiots willing to blow themselves up for a while there, seem to have gotten away from that and gone more for the shooting rampage or shelling tactics instead.
And let's think about this from a terrorist's point of view; if I wanted to kill a room full of people MOST OF WHOM HAVE GUNS, I'm probably not going to bring a gun to that gun fight. I'm going to bring a big damn bomb and kill myself, like all my other jihadist friends do (er, did).
Yes, but from reports coming out of the sandbox, they've run out of most of the idiots willing to martyr themselves without making sure they send someone to Allah ahead of them. They've been resorting to kidnapping people, strapping bombs to them, and sending them out telling them to kill themselves or their families will die, for example. Most of the remaining ME terrorists aren't doing suicide bombings so much any more, having decided that the not-so-smart-bomb tended to waste manpower they're starting to get a little low on. Now they're resorting to civilian mass shootings and remote bombs instead.
Oh, and by the way? Nobody in that room had a gun. The closest person with a gun other than Hasan was the Fort Hood cop outside. Why? Regulations and Federal laws. Soldiers aren't even allowed to keep their privately owned arms in quarters on base, per what I was told today.
Massacring unarmed people in a building via shooting spree is very much al-Queda's style (along with most other ME terrorist outfits').
Edit 2: TXCN just reported that 'sources' indicate that he only used one of the two guns he had with him, the FiveSeveN.