Bloomberg’s mouthpiece tells about the dangers of our military personnel being armed. Every argument against military personnel being armed are the exact same arguments they used to fight concealed carry for civilians. None of those chicken little predictions have come to pass anywhere it’s been tried. If the military brass are so worried about their soldiers carrying, how about a compromise: any soldier who holds a concealed carry permit from any state is permitted to carry a firearm in federal facilities or military bases openly or concealed.
Bloomberg’s mouthpiece brings up the Posse Comitatus Act, but we’re not talking about arming soldiers to act as law enforcement, we’re talking about allowing them to be armed for their own protection and for the protection of those around them.
State governors are already starting to act, while the federal government is responding that recruiters should step up security by closing blinds. These days it’s really hard to tell the difference between real news and parody.
“over statistically rare tragedies like the Chattanooga shooting”
Wait wait wait… So are mass shootings a a big problem in the US or not?
They love to contradict themselves whenever prudent to serve the agenda at that moment.
There is no contradiction, comrade. They are statistically rare, but they are tragedies, so they should NEVER happen.
Seriously, there is no level of acceptable risk to them. Just as for MADD there is no level of drinking that is safe, even though drunk driving incidents are going down. Or the literal nannying and stranger-danger panic.
I am of the opinion that the culture wars in this country are over how much danger is permissible. One of the problems is that the major alignments both have hot topics where “no danger is permissible in this area,” and will not budge off of using governmental power to attempt to eliminate it.
It seems that one branch of possible futures has everyone sitting in padded rooms living life through virtual presence devices, reducing dangerous activities like walking, and being fed through IVs, you know to reduce the danger of choking on a pretzel.
At least SOME of the governors get it!
Merle
I’m not holding my breath waiting for NY and CA to do this. And the list continues.
They favor disarmed everybody except, of course, their bodyguards.
Ian, we’ll only be at a permissible level of danger when every individual is locked in a box 3 meters on a side.
You know that, and I know that…
Every argument against military personnel being armed are the exact same arguments they used to fight concealed carry for civilians.
And all the arguments against armed citizens in general — and concealed carry specifically — are the exact same arguments presented more than 30 years ago, when “Citizen CPR” was being pushed to help save lives in the absence of professionally-trained doctors or while waiting for EMS to arrive. (See The CPR Corollary [PDF warning].)
The only difference is the lack of the “leave it to the professionals” line, since it’s ludicrous to claim that fully-trained, active-duty U.S. soldiers and Marines are not “professional” enough to handle firearms safely. They’ll claim it anyway, in some form, but it’s still ludicrous.
CPR corollary file doesn’t work…
Actually, they did use that U.S. soldiers and Marines are not “professional†enough to handle firearms safely by asserting that only a small percentage are actually trained for combat and that 99% are only there in a support role.
Did they actually use that phrase: “trained for combat”?
It’s true, the majority of MOS designations are “support” roles (“Amateurs discuss tactics; professionals discuss logistics”) and a minority of enlistees go into a “combat” MOS, but to think that any U.S. service member doesn’t know which end of a rifle points toward the target is, to quote Gen. Patton, “Nuts!”
And I’m not even 100% sure that posting military hardware at recruitment offices is a good idea, but that can be worked around just by allowing service members with CCW permits (where required) to carry their personal firearms concealed, and it’s reasonable to assume that like pretty much anyone else who gets a CCW permit, they know how their guns work. I’d support that.
As with anything, allowing service members access to defensive firearms is not a panacea. It won’t fix or prevent all events like Chattanooga. What it will do, though, is give them a chance to reduce the number of casualties by responding immediately instead of waiting around for “first responders” to show up.
It’s that chance that’s currently denied them.
Always laughed at the reasoning that I was a perfectly trustworthy 18yr old with a sidearm just because I wore the uniform (even though I probably shot about 50 rounds a year just to qualify) but the moment I got off the government payroll I instantly became a wannabe rambo amateur (despite training at least 10x more). Statist mentality at work.