The FBI dispatched agents from Austin, San Antonio and Waco to the scene, and pressed into service a 15-member forensic unit to help military police collect evidence. Agents from the bureau's Washington field office interviewed relatives, neighbors and friends who knew Hasan during his years in the Washington area. Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also are on hand to help with weapons analysis.Pictured above is a FN Five-Seven single-action autoloading pistol at the Fabrique Nationale website, a Belgian manufacturer with production and sales units in the U.S. (not necessarily the same weapon used by Hasan).
Investigators also focused on Guns Galore, a firearms store just down the highway from the mosque. Store owner David Cheadle said federal agents interviewed him about the sale of a FN Herstal Five-Seven pistol that was used in the shootings. "It is a popular choice for personal defense," Cheadle said, pulling one from his case, "but it's expensive" -- more than $1,100 at his store.
The gun, made of lightweight polymer, can handle magazines with 20 or 30 rounds. It is a controversial weapon among gun control advocates because it can penetrate body armor when used with more powerful, but restricted, ammunition employed by law enforcement and the military.
An Army official said the suspect had fired more than 100 rounds before he was felled by two Army civilian police officers, Sgt. Kimberly Munley and Sgt. Mark Todd.
Also, from the New York Times, "Preliminary Inquiry Finds No Link to Terror Plot":
The officials said a continuing search of Major Hasan’s computer indicates that he had logged on to Web sites that celebrated radical Islamic ideologies and that he had exchanged e-mail messages with like-minded people, some possibly overseas. In addition, they believe that he may have written inflammatory Internet postings that justified suicide attacks, though that has not been concretely established.It's all uncoordinated to any larger terror plot, and so far there's no evidence of any outside direction. Yet, so far the investigation is providing more compelling evidence that this was not just a man who snapped. Nidal Hasan Bought, begining shortly before 9/11, became a commited jihadist and developed an increasingly hostility to the United States and America's missions abroad. It does little good for the administration and commentators to continue insisting that it's too soon to draw conclusions. As we saw this afternoon, Nidal Hasan attended the same mosque as a number of the September 11 hijackers: "Nidal Malik Hasan, Fort Hood Shooter, Linked to September 11 Terrorists."
RELATED: "'I Could Hear the Bullets Going Past Me'" (via Memeorandum).
4 comments:
Perhaps I missed it mention of it, but that particular armor piercing ammunition is tightly controlled, and in two ways: 1) is illegal for civilians in the USA to own it, and 2) FN does not sell it to civilians anywhere in the word, so far as I know. (to get it through the military offices he would need some sort of approval, requisitions numbers, etc. Individual soldiers in most cases, and certainly in his case, can not just go out and buy things merely because they are soldiers, particularly when it is nonstandard equipment. As far as FN is concered, any purchases by Hasan would be considered civilian sales.)
Without that particular ammunition, that gun is essentially a very low caliber handgun--much less powerful that a .38, or a .45, or even a 9mm.
And, this round is not going to get through "rifle armor" armor plate. It will get through type 2 and perhaps some type 3 plateless vests.
One should note that ther are armor piercing rounds for most calibers; these are illegal in the USA for civilians to own. A standard .45 with these rounds would go through armor as well.
What need to be investigated here is if he somehow used his position in the military to purchase some of the prohibited ammo.
So let us guard against hysteria here. You are perhaps making more out of this that is really there.
That being said, there is no reason to believe that Hasan had any sort of practical knowledge about firearms and so may well believed the hype coming out of FN on this particular product. (note, they have not been particularly successful with this particular product).
In any event, let us not fall into the liberal trap that the purchase of a handgun betrays some sort of nefarious intent per se. It does not.
As a State-:Dept qualified Arabist who scored 3+/4 on the Foreign Service Institute's speaking/reading test, and after a decade-plus of living in the Middle East among various Arab cultures in different countries, I can attest that the cowardice, stoned-slacker moral retardedness of self-pitying "victims" like the creepy Psycho-iatrist this dog of a rat of a pig justified his cowardly acts with, are generalized throughout a culture of making excuses and failing to measure up to minimum standards of human dignity.
That's why their men beat up their women. They can't defeat any foreign armies in the last 1100 years or so, so they beat their wives and kill their daughters on behalf of a gutter religion that justifies their atrocities.
If I failed to make my attitude clear enough, there are four UN studies which have catalogued the inability of Arab countries to develop---I will go to bookmark and send their urls in another post.
This specimen of human garbage reminds me of the waste of time myself and many other FSOs considered our years working with an arrogant collection of retarded throwbacks to the 7th century.
[P.S., a Farsi Harvard PhD who is a former diplomat I talked with recently shared much the same sentiments toward the Iranians as I did toward the Arabs. It is only the similarly moral-retards among the PC DNC lefties who consider the Arabs and Muslims their soul mates, and indeed, they all very much share the same gutless spineless moral retardedness, each in their own manner]
Here's a couple of Economist articles re the UNDP study I refed just for curiosity's sake:
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14070748
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14027698
Just in case you wondered how working in US Embassies and with Arab oil companies might drive one over the top a bit. I have more, but this light reading should get a truly curious mind started.
Guns dont kill people-bullets do. That is why it is significant to know the type of bullet(the thing that comes out of a gun). Did Hasan us the regular store bought type, or the restricted armor piercing type? If he used armor piercing bullets where and how did he get them?
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