If anyone reading this has friends or family at Fort Hood, especially if any of them are among the dead or wounded, our prayers are with you.
I had not known until this afternoon that military personnel are forbidden to carry weapons on military bases.
This strikes me, an ignorant civilian, as not only idiotic but oxymoronic. They’re known as our “armed forces,” after all.
The last people who should be defenseless in this country ought to be soldiers, and the place least vulnerable to a shooting spree ought to be a military base.
Or so it appears to me.
I asked Mike Z Williamson on Baen’s bar. It’s a global policy. Probably somebody adopted it back when gun controlled can considered a good idea, and nobody repelled it.
In the military the whims of a commander have the force of law for his/her subordinates. Unfortunately, that means that really stupid ideas are very easy to implement. Tom Kratman, who writes military training novels, spends a lot of time teaching practical insubordination (including how to get away with it) for that reason.
Most likely it has to do with the MP’s ability to keep order. Unless the unit is practicing, on a mission, or their base is in a volatile area, they have no need to carry their weapons all the time any more than a plumber would need to carry a toilet plunger all the time.
Sounds like someone is trying to paint a “yellow liberals” taint where none exists.
It should definitely NOT be a global policy, though – that’s really unfortunate. It should depend on the particular circumstances of each base.
Lyle, the police is doing a fine job keeping order in my Texas neighborhood. Some of my neighbors have concealed carry licenses, and walk around armed.
A plumber does not need to carry a toilet plunger all the time, but law abiding plumbers are allowed to carry handguns in Texas. Guns are like a first aid kit – might be required at any time, and you won’t have time to get one when you need it. I’d trust the average soldier a lot more than the average plumber.
And I probably didn’t make myself clear. The global policy is that soldiers are permitted to bear arms only when on duty that requires them, or are properly authorized to do so (say, they’re “just relaxing”, but in a base in Iraq). This policy lets base commanders decide that soldiers are to be allowed to have weapons with them, but also allows base commanders to decide their base would be a gun-free zone except for MPs and guards.
A plumber does not need to carry a toilet plunger all the time and a soldier does not need to carry a weapon all the time.
They’re both ‘tools of the trade’ in these cases. A plumber is trained to plumb and only needs to carry a plunger when intending to plumb something. A soldier is trained to kill and only needs to carry a weapon when intending to kill someone.
Tom Jeffer’s son: A soldier is trained to kill and only needs to carry a weapon when intending to kill someone.
Ori: No. A soldier only needs to carry a weapon when the necessity of killing someone might arise. However, that necessity is not always scheduled in advance, nor is it usually an option to wait until you can get your tools.
The equivalent to a soldier in Ft. Hood going armed is not a plumber going with a plunger, but a civilian going armed (or with a first aid kid). If this traitor had shot into a crowd of civilians in nearby Austin, he probably would have been met with return fire. The whole incident would have probably ended faster.
Ori, I do agree with a couple of your points. Having everyone (or at least more of them) armed would have ended the incident quicker. And your analogy of a civilian going armed makes sense.
I’d still like to see a plumber take his toilet plunger to a fancy restaurant, though, unless I was eating there.
Hello All: my father was in the army for 28 years, which made me an army brat. In that whole time I never ever saw him carrying a weapon, except for pictures when he was in Vietnam and old pictures before my time when he was an MP right after WWII in Austria. Unless you are dirrectly training with a weapon, you don’t carry it around. They are kept locked in the company amory. I remember that they would have inspections of the armory where they accounted for every weapon and every round of ammo. If the count did not come out correctly then the company was locked down until the count was reconciled and normally someone was in trouble. My only point is that soldiers do not walk around with their weapons or with live ammo unless it has been issued from the armory. Obviously, being in a war zone changes all of this, except that you still have to follow the rules of engagement. My question about this whole thing is, where were the MP’s who do carry weapons and live ammo? It was a civilian cop who shot the crazed shooter.
Maybe I’m way off base, and don’t understand, having never been in the service. But I think the whole concept needs to be revisited. I think it would a good idea to re-introduce a warrior culture to the whole military. Especially today, when it seems to have become unacceptable to exclude people merely on the basis of their being (by their own admission) our enemies.
My son is a Green Beret and has been in Iraq, Afghanistan etc… several times now and is currently on active duty in far away places. Even he, as gung-ho as he usually is, is talking about the length of this “war” and how it is affecting his men. The military suicide rate in the military has finally reached that of civilians in the US.
RE: carrying weapons; Our soldiers must not appear to be gun-toting, war-mongering, monsters who go around intimidating people with the impressions of being military soldiers. Soldiers are PEACE-KEEPERS these days…and they must look like it!
Even in combat zones we don’t want to look like Darth Vader, (because of all our gear), to our enemy.
It might put him off…(I’m serious here. This is straight from the soldier’s mouth.)
The military has to be PC to keep their funding in these …ah….liberal times.
As for the killer at Ft. Hood. The military already had him under their watchful eye. They knew he was a committed Muslim and he, “had mixed feelings”, about being a Muslim going to fight, perhaps kill other Muslims for Christians. (This is a sure road to hell for Muslims!)
I believe he deserves slow capital punishment.