When you swear the oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States in uniform you give up many of the rights guaranteed therein. Freedom of speech, particularly of the political variety, is gone. Search and seizure can be at the whim of the commander based upon probable cause that would be illegal outside the gates of our forts. In the draft era, even the basic “life, liberty and property” was subordinated to the Spartan needs of service to the nation.
We accept these realities as part of our responsibility to the document we proudly defend. However, perhaps unknown to the general public, servicemembers’ right to possess, store, and carry personal firearms, on and off post, is much more restricted than any American civilian’s right to do so. In a time when American servicemembers are being specifically targeted at home and at military installations, limiting their right to keep and bear arms—a right still granted to every other citizen not in uniform—no longer makes sense.
Military servicemembers and their families are directly threatened by various permutations of Jihadi Islam. The threat is legitimate and demonstrable; Tennessee, Canada, New Jersey, Arkansas, and, of course, Fort Hood, Texas. The military’s response to these attacks is sadly predictable. We will tighten security on the various bases and forts, which in turn makes them, and the soldiers within, increasingly inaccessible to the general public. The troublesome divide between the nation and the men and women who defend it will become wider and deeper. To the senior officers of the military who invariably live on these well-defended military installations, I am sure these actions will appear to do something to safeguard the men and women they command.
In what will become an iconic photo in the gun rights community, the bullet holes surrounding the gun-free-zone sign at the recruiting station in Tennessee perfectly illustrates the foolishness of such zones.
These assumptions would be wrong. Obviously these actions would have done nothing