EDITORIAL: Protecting our protectors here at home

Our military should not have to worry about being targeted by the enemy on their home soil.

That, however, is not the case after a pair of shootings in Chattanooga, Tenn., Friday that left four of our finest dead, with a homegrown enemy — a murderer who also was killed.

On Friday, authorities were attempting to determine whether the 24-year-old murderer, identified by the FBI as Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez, has any connections to terrorists. Investigators Friday also were looking into his reported travels to Yemen and Jordan. Given his tactics, targets and travel history, the likelihood is strong that if he wasn’t working with some militant group, he was inspired by terrorists to act as their agent of hate.

The reports Friday were disturbing. After this murderer shot up a joint military recruiting station at a strip mall, he drove to a Naval Reserve Center a few miles away and killed four Marines before he was slain in a firefight with police. Along with those slain Marines, a Sailor was critically wounded and two others were injured.

Increasingly, our military men and women, who already face dangers outside of the United States, are being targeted in the very place they are protecting, the place where they should be able to take a breath and feel safe themselves.

Military and law enforcement officials are increasingly concerned about these “lone wolves,” as they have been described. The one that comes to mind most quickly is the Fort Hood massacre in which 13 died and 32 were wounded that same year.

There have been other deadly attacks not connected with terrorists, including the dozen killed and four wounded in 2013 at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., by a gunman who was delusional, reportedly thinking he was being controlled by electromagnetic waves. A second shooting at Fort Hood last year resulted in three people being killed and 16 wounded by a veteran who was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Confronted by police, he fatally shot himself.

America should do all it can to ensure the safety of its military men and women. In the latter two cases, some of that can be addressed through increased efforts to help those who suffer from PTSD and through more attention to mental health care in the United States in general.

Efforts like those, however, won’t stop someone who hates the United States and has evil in his or her heart. To deal with that, we need the best intelligence we can gather and reviews of safety precautions, especially at vulnerable locations such as recruitment stations and base entrances. While keeping facilities like recruitment stations as open to the public as possible is important, it has to be balanced with the safety of the brave men and women who are serving their country. We lost four of our best Thursday. We owe it to those who serve to protect us to do all that we can to protect them, especially here at home.