Submitted for your perusal and edification, E-mail Blog report received from:
Massad Ayoob On Guns from “Backwoods Home Magazine”
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FORT HOOD: DÉJÀ VU
Posted: 13 Nov 2009 03:23 AM PST
Blog reader CM Smith noted in the comments section of my earlier entry on the Fort Hood horror, below, “Amazing timing to have latest American Handgunner Ayoob File cover the similar ‘Andy Brown’ case on a USAF base in 1994.” Amazing, indeed. From my perspective, the coincidence was almost creepy.
But, it shouldn’t have been. As we all know, “the past is prologue.”
This time, it was Sergeants Mark Todd and Kimberly Munley who “rode to the sound of the guns.” Fifteen years ago at the air base, it was USAF Security Police Officer Andy Brown. Both times, the Good faced the Evil in horrific situations. Both times, it was the Good people – armed with simple Beretta 9mm pistols – who faced direct gunfire, outshot the Evil people, and put them on the ground…and decisively stopped the carnage.
Andy Brown is a helluva man. I had known his story since shortly after it happened, and got to meet him earlier this year when he attended one of my classes. He was kind enough to share his experience with the class, which unanimously found it both moving and inspirational. He allowed us to record his account of the incident at Fairchild AFB for the Pro-Arms Podcast. You can download it and listen to it at no charge through iTunes or Zune, or at http://proarms.podbean.com. You’ll be looking for podcast number 033. Or, you can read it in the current issue of American Handgunner magazine, in the continuing feature Ayoob Files, available now on the newsstands or readable at no cost at www.americanhandgunner.com.
There is much to learn from it. Just today, we authorized a trainer in South Africa, where the ordinary citizens are presently embattled in a level of violent crime and terrorism alike that goes far beyond anything seen in this country, to use Andy’s podcast in training there. Yes, it’s that important.
Sergeants Munley and Todd have already spoken to the press about their experiences. I hope that they can both do what Andy did, and share the specifics of what they went through with their peers, some of whom will inevitably have to do in the future what they did a week ago. And I salute Andy Brown for having had the courage to do that already. The knowledge born in their hard-won experience will certainly save lives in the future.
For Andy, the most painful part of the experience was arriving too late to save those who had already been shot. The military fifteen years ago did not handle that sort of thing well, and Brown suffered in the aftermath. I sincerely hope THAT past does not become prologue for our two current heroes.