“Between an armed and an unarmed man no proportion holds, and it is contrary to reason to expect that the armed man should voluntarily submit to him who is unarmed, or that the unarmed man should stand secure among armed retainers.” — i
On November 5, 2009, Army Major Nidal Hasan murdered 13 and wounded 33 on base at Fort Hood in Texas. Again at Fort Hood on April 2, 2014, Ivan Lopez, a veteran undergoing treatment for PTSD, opened fire, murdering 3 and wounding 16. These are just two examples on a single base where unarmed soldiers (an oxymoron) have been slaughtered wholesale over the last few decades.
The blame for these horrors may be directly laid on the shoulders of Pentagon brass who, like most government administrators, are terrified of guns (except those in possession of their own “security” teams.)
As a general rule, military officers are constantly competing for promotion, and when range accidents/unintentional discharges (UD’s) happen, someone must be held accountable. Those in charge have learned that the less often soldiers are in possession of both guns and ammunition, the less the chance they will be spending the remainder of their career as a lieutenant colonel on Shemya Island, Alaska.
Couple this with the infection of leftist/Marxist thought permeating our military (and DC) which denies the existence of the individual right to self defense, our solders, like everyone herded into “gun free zones”, have been reduced to lowly sheep ready for slaughter by predators who have no regard for their pesky utopian ideals.
All of this appears to have changed Thursday!
In a public video message, Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, announced that the military ban on carry of defensive firearms by military personnel on domestic bases had been lifted.
Soldiers, sailors, and airmen will need to be cleared by their base commander to do so, but Secretary Hegseth emphasized it would be administered in a “shall issue” manner (but the actual details of how it will be accomplished have yet to be released.)
As explained thus far, as long as the soldier is complying with the state carry laws their base is located in, and is not undergoing any military disciplinary or mental health issues, they will be able to exercise, in the Secretary’s own words, their “God given second amendment right” for personal defense.
Hallelujah and Amen!
If you’d asked me last week what the odds of this EVER occurring were, I would have said less than winning the lottery without buying a ticket. [As all of you know, it wouldn’t have been the first time I was wrong!]
Additional Commentary
Guns are dangerous!
Thank God! If they weren’t they’d serve no useful purpose.
When we introduce guns into our lives, we assume all the risk that accompanies them, and just like cars, chemicals, electricity, and chainsaws, we learn to live with them through proper instruction and practices. And, yes – no matter how much training their is, and no matter how many protocols we invoke, there will still be UD’s and “incidents” that the anti-gun side will point to as some sort of proof that…well, I guess when the dust settles on their argument it will amount to “See! Soldiers can’t be trusted with deadly weapons” – which is the same ridiculous tripe our military has been instituting for the majority of my life, and it sounds REALLY stupid.
If military personnel can’t be trusted with weapons, they shouldn’t be in the military – simple as that. It sounds like Secretary Hegseth shares the same philosophy, and the days of treating those sworn to defend our nation like children appears, at least for now, to have ended!
Time will tell.
“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”— John C. Maxwell
