I’m not so sure that Army Spec. Ivan Antonio Lopez used a Smith & Wesson M&P .45 as a “tool to capture someone’s attention” to get help. But I am sure that the sooner a killer is confronted by an armed defender the better. I’m equally confident that anyone who says “There’s not a need to have fear of guns” on msnbc without being shouted down, ridiculed or condescendingly contradicted has scored a major victory. If that someone is an African American, pro-gun folks score bonus firearms freedom points. In fact, reality is breaking out all over. Check this tidbit from none other than washingtonpost.com . . .
Practically speaking, [the army] acknowledged that there was little they could have done to prevent him from sneaking a weapon onto the sprawling Army post, where more than 50,000 people work each day. Although military police carry out random security checks, requiring everyone to pass through metal detectors would be “frankly untenable,” said Army Col. Steven H. Warren, a Pentagon spokesman.
So there’s no way to make a gun-free zone a true gun-free zone. Who knew? Other than anyone who didn’t think about it rationally. Oh look! Here comes one now, an Iraqi vet writing for huffingtonpost.com:
The military has more restrictive gun laws than the civilian world. It is the civilian world that is infringing on the military’s safety, not the other way around. By this, I mean that on military bases, no one can carry around a personal firearm, a regulation instituted under President George H.W. Bush. At Ft. Hood, specifically, personal firearms for those living on base must be registered with the Directorate of Emergency Services, and if you are living in barracks or temporary housing, they then must be reported to your commander, who can order them to be stored in the arms room.
In the civilian world, as is well known, there are plenty of loopholes in the law, and expired laws, like the Assault Weapons Ban. This allows someone to purchase a gun off base, bring it on base, and unleash carnage. The tougher it is to get a gun in the civilian world, the less likely someone could get one and bring them on base, to murder service members. This doesn’t even get into the “Terror Gap,” which has kept suspected terrorists from being flagged in a background check, allowing them to buy weapons to use against troops, and others.
I’m not saying that Jon Soltz, Co-Founder of VoteVets.org and Iraq War Veteran is delusional. No wait. I am. But would I take away his gun rights? Nope. Would he take mine? Oh yeah. And that’s the gulf war we fight right here at home.
Off topic, but to me Ronan Farrow looks like he could be Frank Sinatra’s son.
I didn’t notice it until you said it, but now I can’t unsee that the top half of his head and face looks just like Frankie. Its uncanny.
Didn’t Mia Farrow say she had an affair with Frank Sinatra? Because that guy sure as fuck doesn’t look like Woody Allen…
What is really sad is that we have to now say “which” Ft. Hood shooting we are referring to.
Leadership saw there was nothing they could do to stop another attack, so they stuck their fingers in their ears and went LALALALALALALALAAA rather than doing the ONE thing that could have worked, letting soldiers carry their personal weapons.
I trust soldiers to defend themselves and those around them. “No gun” zones are magnets for the mentally unsound, criminals, and Muslim jihadists.
You trust the soldiers…uh…in both cases of mass shootings at Ft Hood it was a soldier who was doing the mass shooting. I think all the soldiers should be disarmed. As a matter of fact, this whole shooting/running/jumping thing they do is incredibly dangerous and almost always results in someone getting hurt, so I think they should just go ahead and disband the whole thing (all 4 or 5 branches), and if we need to fight another war we’ll just outsource it to China.
I know Soltz. He’s a democrat zealot and seemed like a prick. Good to see he has gone full retard and drank the gun grabber koolaid.
Metal detectors are a non-starter. The amount of metal on the average uniform would require a soldier or sailor to strip to the skivvies to pass through.
Of course, this doesn’t even touch on the gun hidden in the car. As it is, it can take a significant amount of time to get through the gate with the guards only checking valid stickers and ID cards. There is simply no way that they could search every car that passes.
Anyone who thinks that we can keep guns out of a base is living in fantasy land.
As an active duty service member who was around for 9/11, I will second that. We went full retard and had armed checkpoints with full vehicle searches and metal detectors for everyone entering the base for a couple of weeks afterwords and a 20 minute drive to work would routinely take over 4 hours just to clear security.
The thought of our nations warriors cowering in fear because politicians left them unarmed and helpless in their gun free zones is sickening. Our soldiers deserve better. This whole thing is BS.
And this perfectly sums up my thoughts on the matter. What a friggin loony set of circumstances we have here. It’s embarrassing.
You and I may disagree on some things around here, but on this we are in 100% agreement.
This is a travesty, and a disgusting one at that.
Soltz lacks basic cognitive functions.
Good to hear the commentary from SGT Lunsford. However, I’m guessing since it was on Farrow’s show it was only seen by about a dozen people, and half of them muted it when they heard the SGT making pro-gun comments.
The George Bush thing is not entirely correct. Under Bush the DOD issued a directive to modify the existing directive which was instituted in 1969. I did the research. These directives were in turn derived from Army SOPs. Those start with the letters AR, the earliest one I could find being AR-140.
The deal with the Army has always been that they have to account for every rifle, every rocket, every grenade and every round of ammunition or someone gets hung from the proverbials. It’s always been that way and it makes sense. After all, the Army doesn’t have gun safes, they have arsenals. Those have to be kept secure. Another issue is that if all the Army’s arsenals are kept under lock and key, how can they defend a really large post from arms brought into it from the outside. So private carry is not a good idea either.
Now there is no reason whatsoever that I can think of why the Army would not want to issue arms from their arsenals to responsible base residents as an additional defense. Their whole point of view of keeping everything locked up might have made sense 50 or 100 years ago, but with the size of today’s bases and the large amount of people coming and going it make no sense. They should have more armed personnel. Lots of them, and not just with sidearms, but with rifles.
Why does he say the “expired Assault Weapons Ban” is a loophole?
It was a stupid feel-good law that did not achieve it’s stated goal, so it wasn’t extended.
More to the point, the expired AWB limited magazine capacities to 10 rounds – which happens to be the same capacity of the Smith&Wesson M&P .45 …so it was exempt from the 1994-2004 AWB anyway!
His statement is utterly pointless – as is so often the case when it comes to the civilian-disarmament crowd.
I’m all for concealed carry, however, wouldnt that be chaos if 6-10 legally abiding citizens all had firearms drawn and then the police showed up on scene? Assuming the active shooter was not properly identified and cornered in a room… it would be havoc? Who’s the active shooter? Who’s the good guy? So many people with guns! At least police have uniforms to distinguish them! Just my two cents
Well when 6-10 people are pointing their guns at the same guy it gets kind of obvious. Espesially when all of them drop their guns when ordered and one blows his own head off.
Fact:
When a spree killer attacks, the sooner that good people can bring force to bear on the spree killer, the lower the body count. And the fastest possible way to bring force to bear on a spree killer is having armed personnel already at the location of the spree killer’s attack before the spree killer takes any action.
Conclusion:
Armed personnel on site minimizes the number of mortally wounded victims if a spree killer attacks.
Whether the presence of armed personnel on site convinces a spree killer not to attack at all (bonus!) or armed personnel engage a spree killer within seconds, armed personnel will minimize the body count. That is a win no matter how you look at it.
And that is precisely why those that fight your proposed solution do, indeed, fight it.
We trust our military personnel to carry firearms when they are in a war zone, and trust them to not shoot the good guys, but only the bad guys. Why should we not trust them to do the same when they are not in the war zone?
The right to self defense applies everywhere at all times.
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