This was in relationship to a conversation that US Senator Mike Lee had with General Milley about Fort Hood’s slaughter of American soldiers going through the process of readying to deploy overseas when US Army Major Hassan Nidal became an Islamic Jihadist and started firing away with his sidearm killing 13 and wounding 30. Now I readily admit that I did not serve and only have visited four military bases in my lifetime but after I thought his stance a bit off. There is a reason why the phrase “when seconds count, the police are minutes away”.
“In terms of carrying privately owned weapons on military bases … that is not authorized, that is a DoD policy and I do not recommend it be changed,” he said. Law enforcement on bases is more than adequate, he said, explaining that during the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, the police responded ‘pretty quick.’
“You take the Ft. Hood incident … those police responded within 8 minutes … so that’s pretty quick, and a lot of people died in the process of that, but that was a very fast evolving event and I am not convinced from what I know that carrying privately owned weapons would’ve stopped that individual,” he said.
Eight minutes is a long time if someone is shooting – and all you can do in self-defense is cower. This is an asymmetric war we are in – there are no recognized battlefields with a designated front line. Why should Jihadists participate in such – they’d lose all the time against our forces. But when you can embed inside (as we have seen in Iraq and in Afghanistan when those that were formerly “trusted” inside the wire shuck off the pretense and kill Americans) and then attack, so much greater that other vital part of the asymmetric war – the PR component (as we saw in the Viet Nam – it was the PR waged in our home front that sapped the political will to fight).
“I’ve been around guns all my life, I know how to use them, and arming our people on our military bases and allowing them to carry concealed privately owned weapons I do not recommend that as a course of action,” Milley continued.
I have carried, open and concealed, for years. No, I have never had to unholster it in self-defense. But I do have to wonder about the General’s words about the inability of someone who can wage a self-defense equal to that of the offence of a Nidal or anywhere / anyone else. Sure, perhaps a new private full of testosterone being pumped up and ready to fight going off to “party” may well result in negative outcomes (even though we don’t see civilian law abiding citizens being, well, law abiding). But not to let older, more mature NCOs and officers?
Seconds count. Eight minutes was a long time…
(H/T: Townhall)
