American military bases are Gun-Free Zones. Because of a Bush 41 – Clinton Era policy, military personnel are actually forbidden from carrying firearms for personal protection at American military facilities. Obama’s Pentagon justifies this policy by saying that… I am not making this up… military personnel cannot be trusted to safely handle firearms.
“DoD does not support arming all personnel. We hold this position for many reasons,” Army Lt. Col. Valerie Henderson, a Pentagon spokeswoman said Monday.
Those reasons include safety concerns and the risk of accidental discharges, she said.
Which has led to this absurd situation – Civilians providing armed protection for soldiers.
Obama’s Pentagon has promised to study the issue of whether soldiers can be trusted with guns, but given this administration’s attitude toward self-defense, the result of this study is a foregone conclusion. In the meantime, Obama’s Defense Department has … for security reasons … ordered recruiters to stop wearing uniforms.
It’s amazing how much progressive insanity is just accepted as normal.
Anecdotal; when the POTUS visits or transits through a military base, the Secret Service takes the firing-pins away from the guards at the gates. All the other guns on-base are locked-down and accounted-for. This is how much our President trusts his/our troops.
**Disgraceful**
It used to be a Leader was measured by the number of trusted heavily-armed men who stood with him — and behind him.
I’m thinking that CAIR might form the Muslim Panthers and provide the protection for the unarmed military people. Maybe the National of Islam guard could help train them.
It seems like we’re living in Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World, all rolled into one. SCOTUS used to rule if a law was in accordance with The Constitution, now SCOTUS allows law to supersede The Constitution. Our rights are being erroded, the progressives want the constitution of the UN to supersede the American Constitution. It’s a topsy turvey world we are living in. I live in El Salvador where the murder rate has risen to 22 per day. Five or six victims a day are those who either failed or refused to pay extortion to the gangsa or young school boys who refuse to be recruited into a gang, the remainder are gangbangers. I’ve been thinking of moving back to the U.S but where? Now even the U.S. seems to be unsafe. Thanks to the progressives, the world has gone nuts and we’ve lost our moral compass.
Wait they were also told to close the blinds. Blinds and civilian uniforms somehow offer protection when the sign over the door says its a military office.
President executive order is really just president idiot.
Yeah, closing the blinds and wearing civilian clothes will deter an attack. Too bad Admiral Kimmel and General Short never thought of that.
The issue of arming personnel is complicated, and it goes back further than Obama, Clinton, or Bush. The military has always been elitist, with a definite pecking order. The officers tend to see the enlisted people as lower life forms. Officers who graduated from West Point or Annapolis look down their noses at the ROTC and OCS graduates. Infantrymen look down on Combat Service Support soldiers. In the Air force, pilots consider themselves better than officers who are not aviators. And so on.
The brass have a very real attitude that their subordinates are unqualified to use weapons except under the most strict supervision. They assume that a private, or even a sergeant, is at best likely to shoot himself in the foot, and at worst likely to attempt a mutiny.
When I was on active duty, when we trained with rifles, the unit would go to the armory, sign out the weapons, go to the range and shoot, then go back to the armory and turn the weapons back in. Even military police (and civilian Defense Department police) follow the same SOP: sign out a weapon from the arms room at the start of a shift, then turn it in when they go off duty. Apart from some generals and admirals, I never heard of any service members being armed while off-duty.
A mugging victim has a slightly better chance of being rescued by an armed passer-by in Phoenix or Concord than on a military base. In a “shall issue CCW” state, there may be an armed citizen nearby. Even in an anti-gun jurisdiction like New York, there may be an armed off-duty cop nearby. It’s a slim chance, but, on a military base, there is none. US military bases are the epitome of gun-free zones.
And the bullet holes in the recruiting station window, next to the “no guns” sign, offer the perfect image to demonstrate the effectiveness of that policy.
Ironically, Tennessee is a Shall Issue state, so it’s possible that the recruiting station was the only “gun-free zone” in that mall.
Meanwhile the Obama Admin. and the DOJ are converting police departments into uniformed paramilitaries that routinely patrol with flak-jackets and military-grade automatic-carbines and ex-military armored personnel carriers and MRAPS.
But our military is being systematically-disarmed, and ordered to wear civvies….
If the soldiers in Chattanooga were armed, I don’t know that it would have made any difference – the perp fired from outside.
That said, these men and women should be provided with basic instruction for use of firearms in civilian areas (mainly the same legal information provided to CC licensees) and allowed to arm themselves off-base (and encouraged to defend themselves if possible).
The insult is the idea that they should hide behind window blinds and not wear their uniforms. If that’s not a form of surrender, what is it? Are we not handing the terrorists a victory? Where is the military brass on this? Would Patton or Ike told their troops to stand down and hide in Tennessee?
After Drummer Lee Rigby was butchered in the streets of London, British soldiers were advised to not wear uniforms in public. I say spinach. What the response then (and now) should have been is “this is the UK/US and these are our soldiers. If that incites you to murder, then get the hell out”.
The Smart People cannot figure out why The Donald is so popular right now… well, he’s rude and crude and giving voice to a lot of people who are becoming fed up with the pussies (no offense to cats) running the show. I’m angry about Trump only because the GOP is so completely useless that it takes a Trump to shake the bottle.
I’d be interested to know when the decision to disarm the guards at military bases made. Back in the 80s, I was a reserve cop (unpaid, trained volunteer) and we provided security for then VP Bush on a couple of occasions. No one took my weapon and ammo.
It’s not that armed Recruiters would have returned-fire, it’s that
dirty low-down yellow cowardsmiscreants tend to avoid targets where the targets might shoot back in the first-place. It’s not so-much armed self-defense as it is armed prophylactic defense.“Anecdotal; when the POTUS visits or transits through a military base, the Secret Service takes the firing-pins away from the guards at the gates. ”
I have heard that as well.