Another shooting at major US military base kills civilian employee

In yet another shooting incident at US military base, a civilian Army employee has been shot to death at Fort Knox Army base in the state of Kentucky.

The assailant in the Wednesday afternoon shooting remained at large as of Wednesday night, Army authorities announced.

The shooting prompted a security lockdown at the major military base, according to officials, who further elaborated that it was “not a random act.”

“Special Agents from the US Army Criminal Investigation Command are investigating a personal incident and not a random act of violence,” said the spokesperson for the independent Army investigative agency, Chris Grey, in a brief statement.

The shooting came less than two weeks after a US Marine training officer shot two fellow Marines as well as himself to death at the major Quantico Marine Corps base in Virginia, near the US capital.

Also in February, local news outlets in Kentucky reported that a soldier and his wife died of gunshot wounds at their home on the Army base in what authorities at the base described as an apparent case of “a domestic dispute.”

The latest shooting reportedly occurred in a parking lot outside the US Army Human Resources Command headquarters.

The shooting victim, according to authorities on the base, was an employee of the Army Human Resources Command and was pronounced dead after he was transported by ambulance to an Army hospital.

Fort Knox is a huge military base near the major city of Louisville, sprawling over 170 miles in three counties and home to more than 40,000 Army soldiers and officers, their family members and civilian employees.

Over 30,000 people are reported shot to death every year in the United States. This is while about 4.5 million firearms are annually sold across the country at a cost of two to three billion dollars.

According to the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the Centers for Disease Control, the US has an average of 87 deaths each day as the result of gun violence, with an average of 183 injured.