I believe that as an NCO, it is my responsibility to keep my soldiers safe no matter what. If I cannot keep them safe, then what is the point of them obeying my orders? The quote above by the Israeli soldier is priceless; that my ACUs are a halloween costume if I am unarmed.

It’s not a rights issue. It’s a discipline and safety/public order issue.

Publicly owned weapons are controlled more tightly on a military base than most civilians can imagine. The largest scale training exercise will be halted and units will be kept in the field for days or even weeks to search for a lost weapon (or ammo).

Only those Soldiers who have a purpose to carry a loaded gun are afforded the responsibility to do so.

There would be more senseless deaths from personnel being able to carry personally owned weapons around on base. For every criminal or terrorist attack stopped, you would have many, many more instances of servicemen shooting each other over a drunken disagreement in the barracks (or at the on base club) and disgruntled servicemembers shooting their COs or NCOs after getting an article 15 or courtmartial.

Bottom line is that a post commander is responsible for everything that happens on post. If given a choice, I would bet every one would choose to ban POWs as a control measure to regulate who has access to dangerous weapons on post.

Of course if I wore that shiny hat I’d go even farther and decree that Vermont-style carry laws would be the law of the land. No reason civilians should remain vulnerable targets either.

You both are speaking as people who are personally unaware of the charged nature of the US Army in the 1970′s due to racial conflict in the barricks during the transition from the draft Army to the all volunteer Army.

Much of the the US Military senior brass loved the 1993 Clinton order because it absolved them of any responsibility for either gun-shot suicides or on-base force protection from terrorism and armed crime.

This careerist anti-self defense attitude was not limited to on-base self-defense and is multi-decade long in duration.

It also included the 11th ACR on the inter-German border and the 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea during the mid-to-late Cold War.

During the late 1980′s, Cold War on border patrols in Germany routinely did not carry ammunition.

Even when they did carry ammunition it was either depot packed (at first) or loaded in magazines inside sealed and banded ammo cans.

I am informed that in OP Alpha ammunition was in the arms room, depot packed, and banded. This was even after 2 incidents I’m told US troops received small arms fire in conjunction with border crossing incidents. It took very specific ROE steps to issue the ammo much less fire.

This was even true in Korea where a US officer was axed to death by North Korean savages during Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

Even in Italy, in an 1980′s environment where US troops were targets of the Red Brigade and other groups American servicemen were not issued ammunition. Not even officers or senior NCOs.

Under Clinton, the USAF security troops at the Khobar Towers did not have live ammunition to engage the suicide truck bomb.

This was also true of the USMC barricks in Lebanon under Reagan. The USMC gate guard did not have a loaded clip in his M16 when the suicide truck went through his check point. (He should have has a loaded 40mm grenage launcher with a manned .50 caliber HMG behibd him as back up at all times.)

It would have been the NVAFs biggest victory and they wouldn’t have needed a plane.

This PC nonsense will kill more of us until somebody acknowledges the obvious. We are at war, and the enemy is trying to kill us, and there is no such thing as a non combat zone.

When I was in USAF security police in the mid-60s our main function was to be cheap, expendable trip-wires. I did more shooting and had better weapons as a civilian than I did when I was guarding nuclear weapons. We used to speculate as to just how easy it would be to infiltrate the base and destroy resources and people.

As usual, the IFD has it right and we keep thinking “it can’t happen here”. Yeah, right.

Service members can own personal fire arms, but they must be stored in the unit arms room or at the post gun club (almost every army post has one). They MUST be registered with the provost marshal (post head police officer) too.

In ancient times soldiers living in post housing, typically E-5 and up and married, could keep their personal arms in their quarters (at home). Once upon a time officers and NCO’s could carry their own firearms in the field too. Soldiers in barracks have almost always had their issue arms kept in a locked rack or a arms room in this century.