Disarming Our Military

Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Randall Smith died early Saturday morning from injuries he sustained in the shootings at two military facilities in Tennessee on Thursday. Smith, 24, underwent surgeries for three different gunshot wounds but ultimately passed away surrounded by his family. Smith was a reservist serving on active duty as a logistics specialist in Chattanooga.

Five servicemen have now died and two were injured at the hands of Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, a radicalized Muslim who was born in Kuwait and grew up in Tennessee. Abdulazeez opened fire first at a recruiting facility in a strip mall in Chattanooga, then at a U.S. Navy facility seven miles away. The shootings are being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism.

Our country continues to absorb the blows and feel the sorrows from these shootings at our military facilities. The events warrant a closer look at the risks of a disarmed military in the United States.

Calls from both American veterans and politicians to arm our military at home are growing in response to Thursday’s events. “Our military installations and facilities should be protected with all the proper security,” said an Army veteran in New York who served as an MP in the 1970s. “It is ridiculous that they’re not in today’s environment. America’s military workers should be secure and protected. Our soldiers protect us and we should protect them.”

Related: Islamic Radicalization in America

Wisconsin Governor and presidential candidate Scott Walker weighed in on the issue at a campaign stop Friday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “It’s a whole different world. It was coming off the Cold War… With the threat that we have now not only abroad but domestically, when our military particularly is potentially a target, we need to make sure that places like this recruiting facility can be armed so our heroes can be protected,” Walker said.

Sen. Richard Black of Virginia, in a tweet using the hashtag #ArmOurMilitaryNow, said Saturday, “There is something seriously wrong when we need civilians guarding our military personnel because we disarmed them.”

“We need to make sure that places like this recruiting facility can be armed so our heroes can be protected.” — Gov. Scott Walker

A Department of Defense directive restricting weapons at military weapons domestically was signed under President George H.W. Bush, and President Bill Clinton upheld the ruling disarming soldiers on military bases. It continued the policy of keeping protective firearms out of the hands of those most trained to use them.

Only military police can legally carry firearms. Our military at home are left as virtual sitting ducks and vulnerable should a terrorist burst through the doors of a military recruiting station.

“The Department took a close look at this after the 2009 shooting at Fort Hood and again after the Navy (Yard) shooting (in Sept. 2013), and our position is we do not support arming all personnel on post, camps, stations,” Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Steve Warren said as recently as 2014. According to the Pentagon, the concerns regarding arming military personnel at home are: 1) safety; 2) the prohibitive cost of training; and 3) the Lautenberg Amendment, which does not allow those convicted of misdemeanors to carry weapons.

On Friday the DOD announced it is taking small steps to better protect the military at U.S. installations. Those steps include closing military installations within 40 miles of the Tenn. shooting and advising that military personnel in this area not wear their uniforms. “The Department of Defense continues to gather information on the circumstances surrounding the tragedy in Tennessee, including the specific security measures in place at the two facilities,” spokesman Peter Cook said.

As early as 2009, military spouses were fearful of domestic terrorism on military bases.

Military recruiting centers, found in strip malls and other retail locations across the country, do not typically have armed personnel.

In an interview on CNN, news anchor John Roberts asked Mandy Foster, wife of a Fort Hood shooting victim, how she felt about her husband’s upcoming deployment to Afghanistan. Ms. Foster responded, “At least he’s safe there and he can fire back, right?”

Military recruiting centers, found in strip malls and other retail locations, do not typically have armed personnel. They are especially vulnerable because they are positioned to be open and accessible to the public. “Recruiting offices have been kind of on the leading edge of targets simply because they are both ubiquitous and they’re vulnerable,” Brian Michael Jenkins, senior adviser to the president of Rand Corp., told The Military Times.

Related: The Dark Side of Abdulazeez

After the Ft. Hood massacre in 2009, the Obama administration issued an 80-page report, signed by then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, which did little to address the issue of unprotected military personnel on their own bases.

A recently retired army colonel, who served proudly for over 30 years, told LifeZette, “Our bigger problem is President Obama’s failure to address radical Islam. The president was very quick to blame the shooting in Charleston on white radicals, but he won’t blame this shooting in Chattanooga, or the one in Fort Hood, on radical Islam.”

TERRORISM OR MURDER? A Timeline

June 1, 2009
Carl Bledsoe shot and killed 23-year-old Pvt. William Long at a recruiting station in Little Rock, Ark. The killer fired an SK5 semi-automatic weapon from the back seat of a Ford Explorer. Bledsoe became an observant Muslim in college and had travelled to Yemen before the attack. He changed his name to Abdulhakim Muhammad after converting to Islam and was sentenced to life in prison for the shooting, prosecuted not under federal terrorism charges but as a state murder case.

November 5, 2009
US Army major and psychiatrist Nadal Hassan killed 13 and wounded 33 others at the Fort Hood Army base in Ft. Hood, Texas. Hassan shouted “Allah Akbar!” before the shooting. He used an FN Five-seven automatic weapon, was convicted and awaits execution. The Obama administration called this case one of  “workplace violence.” The victims of this attack and the previous one were later awarded Purple Hearts for their injuries, indicating the administration’s change of perception.

September 16, 2013
Aaron Alexis killed 12 people and injured three others at the Washington Navy Yard in Southeast Washington, D.C. Alexis had history of mental health problems, and a Department of Navy report on the shooting noted “critical performance gaps” during the shooting. Alexis was shot and killed by police.

March 24, 2014
Jeffrey Tyrone Savage, a civilian truck driver, grabbed a gun from a petty officer on watch aboard a destroyer at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia and shot a sailor. Savage was shot by Navy security forces.

April 2, 2014
At Fort Hood, Texas, three soldiers died and 16 others were wounded in a shooting rampage by another soldier, Army Specialist Ivan A. Lopez, who then killed himself.

Nov. 13, 2014
Two Navy civilian police officers were wounded after they were confronted by a knife-wielding man at the submarine base in Groton, Conn.

January 6, 2015
At Fort Bliss, Texas, an Army veteran shot and killed a psychologist. He then took his own life.

June 17, 2015
An armed man crashed his SUV into the Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas. He was killed by armed military guards.

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