35 thoughts on “Fort Hood, “Gun Free” Zone”

  1. I’m always amazed when people who’s only experience with the military is watching Chuck Norris movies opine about military operations. In this case, the stupidity burns.

    1) The latest edict on not carrying weapons on base was issued 1992 under Bush.

    2) This edict reinforced policies and procedures that were standard in the US military going back (from personal experience) to the Reagan years (1985, my first assignment to Naval Station Coronado) and my dad’s experiences (USAF, 1960s) and my grandfather’s (USN, WWII). This policy was best summarized as “nobody is under arms on base unless they have a reason to be under arms.” In other words, people not on sentry or security duty were not carrying weapons. In fact, in the US Navy (to include the Marines), whether or not you wear a hat indoors is governed by whether or not you’re carrying a weapon.

    3) The reasons the US military tends not to allow weapons to be carried on base are:
    a) Most people are not issued pistols. Do you really want to lug a rifle around to the PX, to get a haircut or go see the doc? It’s a PITA.
    b) Accidental discharge is vastly more likely to occur than an active shooting, as evidenced by the rarity of such incidents.
    d) Okay, imagine that we have an active shooter. How in the hell is anybody going to figure out who the bad guy is out of a crowd of people in the same damn uniform shooting at each other?

    1. Gerrib: “Booooossshhh”

      Does the fact that a Bush did something somehow make it less stupid? Do you have any idea what a stupid argument this is?

      Anyone who has a personal handgun, and is legally allowed to carry it off base, should be allowed to carry it on base. This really isn’t hard.

      1. Does the fact that the US military has been “disarming” its soldiers since at least WWII make it any less stupid to decide to suddenly arm them?

        The whole point of a military is that the soldiers do what they are told to do. The military is NOT a democracy. We don’t let soldiers decide how long they can grow their hair, and but going to let them decide if they carry on base and what gun?

        Again, I’m boggled at your mindset, Rand.

        1. Does the fact that the US military has been “disarming” its soldiers since at least WWII make it any less stupid to decide to suddenly arm them?

          No. In the past, the US military didn’t have to worry about Islamic nutjobs shooting up bases.

          1. Except this guy’s not Islamic anything. He’s just a disgruntled nutjob. The Navy Yard shooter was a garden-variety nut.

            Both kinds of people have been in the military since George Washington was working for the British.

          3. Hey I’ve got an even better rebuttal to this dopey Gerrib argument from (stupid) tradition:

            How about military members, who swear/affirm an oath to defend the Constitution, are actually afforded the rights protected by it. i.e. QUIT TREATING OUR MILITARY MEMBERS LIKE SACRIFICIAL ANIMALS. I think yelling is appropriate here.

            “Because we’ve always treated our military members like sub-citizens, well, since WWII” is a craptastic argument.

            Oh, and let the military grow real facial hair. Being limited to these pervy mustaches is emasculating . The guys in here aren’t eunuchs, and if you shouldn’t want us to be.

          6. The bearing of arms contributes to a warrior mindset.

            Unlike Admiral Gheribal, I was actually Combat Arms.

            I may not want every Private Snuffy carrying without express permission from his CO but there is absolutely and positively no logical or sane reason that a NCO, Warrant or Commissioned Officer should be barred from carrying a sidearm on which he has demonstrated minimal competency on.

          8. Admiral,

            Uhhh…NO!!! It’s fucking not……..specific wording have specific meanings. There are two groups in the Navy that would meet the definition at least partially and abstractly. SEALs and Naval Corpsmen attached to MEUs. CB’s are kind of Combat Armsish like the Army Combat Engineers but still don’t quite meet the definition.

            You weren’t Combat Arms, you were a Squid. Anytime you were interfacing with Small Arms, it was in an Administrative Capacity only.

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_arms

          9. And you still haven’t addressed my point and you still don’t get land warfare experience on a ship.

          10. “I may not want every Private Snuffy carrying without express permission from his CO but there is absolutely and positively no logical or sane reason that a NCO, Warrant or Commissioned Officer should be barred from carrying a sidearm on which he has demonstrated minimal competency on.”

            So you actually don’t want every uniformed service member carrying a weapon, you just want some carrying a weapon. How does that differ from policy now?

        2. I’m boggled at your total inability to make any kind of argument without fucking the bottom out of a strawman.

          1. M Puckett – this may come as a shock to you, but just because the US Army defines “combat arms” in a certain way does not mean that service on a warship is not service in a combat unit.

            Also, M Puckett, you’ve not addressed my points. Let’s try just one – when PFC Dirtbag decides to shoot up the HQ because he didn’t get leave, how in the hell is anybody supposed to sort out who’s the active shooter and who’s trying to defend themselves?

          2. 1.) You don’t understand the meaning of combat arms . Not all combatants are combat arms. You were not combat arms and the definition goes well beyond the US Army. The Wiki link did a good job explaining it.

            2) your argument is another strawman. A variani of the Wild West fallacy. Odds are people would figure it out quickly from the totality of the circumstances as they have in other instances.

      2. Anyone who has a personal handgun, and is legally allowednot legally prohibited to carry it off base, should be allowed tonot be restrained from carry(ing) it on base. This really isn’t hard.

        Meaning was a little off. fixed 😀

  2. “as they do when deployed” would be a lot more persuasive if we didn’t have the 1983 Marine Barracks “Beirut Bombing” example in our mental archives.

    I admire Reagan and support the military, having served myself in the US forces during that era and claiming my tiny piece of the victory in the cold war. But I was ordered into guard duty during a “heightened security” period following our attack on Libya, with full kevlar helmet and flak jacket, and an unloaded plastic and aluminum M16A1. Had a Libyan approached my checkpoint I would have asked him to stop, and had he presented a valid Libyan passport with German visa, I would, under SOP, have recorded his name and local address and admitted him to the base. Had he resisted my request and I had clubbed him with my plastic weapon, I was expected to be responsible for the damages to that weapon. Had he run me over with his vehicle, crashed the wooden bar barricade, and entered base leaving my heroic body bleeding on the pavement, it would have been a “peacetime” incident leaving me even ineligible for a purple heart.

    Guard duty, interior or exterior, was not then nor is now an assignment our senior military leadership takes anywhere NEAR as seriously as our recruited are trained to regard it.

  3. Just to be clear, I completely agree with Gerrib that carrying around a rifle all over the base (Hood, Bondsteel, or “site 16, bumfuxystan” ) would be a PITA. But it’s quite often an assigned duty to do exactly that, for various reasons, WITHOUT EVEN being issued (or allowed to buy one’s own) ammo.

    All over post the entryways, in my experience, are equipped with buckets of sand into which weapons are to be “cleared” (discharged) to reduce likelihood of accidental discharge. I also have pretty good assurance that most accidental unaimed fire tends to hit and damage things, rather than persons. Hell, even intentional and aimed fire is generally more likely to hit someTHING than somebody. (Things generally outnumbering people and being unable to jump out of the way or behind other things when the sh*t h*ts the fan.)

    It’s been over thirty years but I seem to recall when I was assigned official “guard” duty I was awarded a temporary MP patch to designate me as one of the ‘good guys’ — if that hasn’t changed it simplifies your scenario (d) active shooter, who must either, (d-1) acquire a bogus MP patch as well as a weapon or (d-2) be sure to engage the patched-and-armed interior guards FIRST before targeting random soldiers in line for a haircut, etc.

    I haven’t seen any Chuck Norris movies, or Rambo, for that matter, but I think there are sensible ways to get more arms into the hands of reasonable people on base than are being discussed in such media — or on CNN for that matter.

    1. I think there are sensible ways to get more arms into the hands of reasonable people on base than are being discussed in such media

      Yes, as I said, at a minimum, if someone can legally carry off base, they should be allowed to do so on base as well.

  4. Well first off, this DoD directive isn’t law. Without support of the law it is lawless and should be ignored or overturned. More on this in a second.

    A few years back, after the first Ft Hood shooting and the stupid DoD guidance on surviving workplace violence stuff started coming out (hide! throw staplers!), a buddy and I tried to get our base’s leadership to change the base policy on carrying firearms on the premises.

    We called the base police for info, they told us Title 18 USC 930 gave the base commander authority to prohibit the bearing of firearms on base (federal facilities). So we actually, you know, read the law. You should too. Turns out it doesn’t authorize prohibition on bearing arms at all. Pay attention to subsection (d)(3). So we wrote up our short analysis and request to change policy or get his special waiver to the base commander (which the base website said was the procedure to get a waiver to carry on base).

    I was a contractor (which can be fired at will) so we kept my name out of the email, in fear of easy reprisal. Within a day or so our branch chief (who we didn’t tell about our email) came and told my buddy (who was/is a fed) he needed to stop asking questions immediately or more backchannel heat would come down on his head and affect his career, and that he didn’t want any more conversations like the one he just had with our directorate commander (who had a conversation with the base commander). The base commander, after the backchannel (undocumented) threat, responded with a brief email “no you cannot have a waiver and we think the law enables our prohibition”. In other words, “suck it, plebe”. As you can imagine, our appeal to the Oath of Office the base commander took didn’t have the desired effect. Oathbreaker.

    Turns out all these base policies are in conflict with the law, as you can see for yourself. Bringing a case against it though requires some things of you:
    1) Standing. You have to work on base/in a federal facility. Meaning you are military, fed or a government contractor.
    2) A willingness to throw away any hope of continuing your career. The extralegal means by which you can be punished for failing to kowtow include losing your job, losing your security clearance, losing base access, losing the ability to get future jobs supporting government, losing all privacy on base (they can search what they want whenever they want, etc.

    I’m not a lawyer though, maybe there is a way to not have the case thrown out on standing issues while at the same time avoiding all the extralegal reprisals that you could be subjected to. Until Alan Gura or his like picks up such a case, I imagine the rights of Americans (Mil/Fed/CTR) that happen to work on federal facilities will continue to be illegally infringed.

    1. So you wanted to go hunting on base?

      As a civilian contractor, you were already privileged over the military personnel by not being subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). The DOD has wide authority to run its operations as they see fit. It’s called “maintaining good order and discipline.” Speaking as somebody formerly subject to the UCMJ, the only way I’m giving any civilian contractor a weapon or allowing him access to one is if the base is about to be overrun.

      Again, Ryan, the military is not a democracy, and never was. You do in fact surrender rights when you join the military, which everybody from George Washington (or hell, Julius Caesar, for that matter) understood.

      1. If you are confused, “lawful purpose” is any purpose that doesn’t break existing law. Hunting ain’t the entirety of it, it is an example.

        Surrender rights? No, you don’t. Not a single piece of paper I signed, nor oath I took, surrendered my rights (I was a CGO before I was a contractor). Not to mention the irrational hypocrisy it would take to think that you could actually protect and defend rights by sacrificing your own. I heard some silly NCO say something similar to the crap you are spewing back when I was in JROTC, turns out he was a liar perpetuating myths just like you.

        “The Military isn’t a Democracy” is a red herring – it doesn’t matter a whit. As if I think democracy would be some kind of improvement…

        We already know you are a totalitarian statist. Your explanation that you wouldn’t let a contractor have arms on base is derivative and not illuminating, and your appeal to yourself as an authority is a pathetic argument. “I was a veteran” is not a trump card. I can pull it out too, and likely a veteran a lot more recently than you. Your appeal to Julius Caesar is even worse, as if we should model our understanding of rights on the Roman empire.

        btw, “good order and discipline” is not a carpet clause to allow whatever infringement of rights against military members its espouser desires and can clumsily rationalize. Of course, you probably think the commerce clause means that Congress can do anything they damn well please too.

  5. Well I Imagine Col Rand Simberg (USA-Ret) is an absolute expert on
    Military culture and operations….

    1. I always look forward to comments from Douchenozzle, because one can never tell how unremittingly stupid they will be. It’s like a box of chocolates stuffed with dog feces.

      1. So Rand Simberg who has never worn a Uniform, Never sworn an Oath,
        never tromped around the boonies knows more about how the
        Army should run then the Joint Chiefs and the Sargeant Major of the Army.

        If they think it’s a problem, let’s hear them say it.

        1. Are you ever going to come up with a non-idiotic logical argument, or is your limit ad hominem and idiotic argumentem ad authoritatem.

          Sorry for the big Latin words, but they aren’t for the village idiot. Just for those reading its spew.

          1. So, Rand, by your logic I know as much about rockets as you do. I mean, the fact that the biggest rocket I ever built fit into a shoebox and used a solid-fuel motor smaller than a shotgun shell doesn’t really matter, right?

        2. Lets see your DD-214. you and the Gheribals since you are so fond of calling others out unprovoked.

        1. I will show mine when DN-GUY shows his since he was critiquing Rand’s military credentials or lack therof.

          And since you butted-on where you weren’t a party, I will add when you post yours with all your vast ‘Combat Arms’ experience on a ship as a pre-requisite to showing mine.

  6. I’ve had the “pleasure” of visiting places that would be called “police states”. One of the defining characteristics was a lots and lots of armed military personnel everywhere. I’m not sure it’s something we should be emulating. There is a good argument for increasing the number of armed personnel on a military base, but I’m not sure the argument for making it virtually universal is anywhere near as strong. As far as I can tell, the policy since at least the start of the 20th century has been soldiers in state-side bases are only armed when their specific duty calls for it. I think this was even true during the two World Wars.

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