Guardian documents five mass shootings at US military facilities since 2013

Trump approved firing-squad execution of Hasan for Fort Hood attack

A Guardian review published alongside its reporting on the execution of Nidal Hasan documented five other mass shootings at US military facilities between 2013 and 2025. Although mass shootings in the US are “disturbingly common,” they are rare at military facilities, the Guardian reported.

The review accompanied reporting that President Donald Trump approved the execution of Hasan, the army psychiatrist convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood attack, by US Army firing squad. Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a post on X that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “has recommended – and President Donald J. Trump has approved – death by U.S. Army firing squad for convicted terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan.” Parnell added: “The Secretary of the Army will set the time and place of the execution. Judgement day for Hasan has finally come.” Parnell referred to Hasan as a “convicted terrorist” in his post.

The Guardian reported that Hasan would become the first US soldier executed by the US military in more than 60 years.

Five other mass shootings at US military facilities

In 2025, a soldier opened fire at a US military base in the state of Georgia, wounding five fellow troops before he was tackled and apprehended.

In 2019, a US sailor fatally shot two people and wounded a third at a base in Hawaii, while a Saudi military student shot dead three people at a military facility in Florida the same year.

A Kuwaiti-born US citizen attacked two military installations in Tennessee in 2015, killing four Marines and a sailor. The FBI concluded the violence was inspired by a “foreign terrorist group.”

Two years before the Tennessee attacks, a man killed 12 people and wounded eight at the Washington Navy Yard in the US capital before being shot dead by officers.

Hasan’s trial and the 2009 Fort Hood attack

Hasan was sentenced to death by a military jury in 2013 for the November 5, 2009, attack at a medical facility on the sprawling Fort Hood base, which served as a staging point for soldiers deploying to combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. The attack killed 13 people, 12 of whom were soldiers, and 30 of the wounded were soldiers. Hasan was shot and partially paralyzed by a civilian police officer who responded to the attack.

Hasan, a US-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, was opposed to the US military’s occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the court that convicted him was told. He had spoken online with the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaida propagandist and American citizen subsequently killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.

During his trial, Hasan chose to conduct his own defense but called no witnesses and gave no testimony, and made no attempt to deny the charges. Court-appointed defense attorneys expressed concern that he was seeking execution.