New military gun policy may not mean more guns on base

This will never happen unless POTUS directly forces Commanders to do so (which will never happen). Senior NCOs/Officers seem to have a hard time accepting change (even simple change like sleeve rolling) and will not tolerate risk. This is why we have to do 183 online classes each year. It's why we have to have 'vehicle inspections' where we check registration, etc. The Army tries to legislate common sense actions and behaviors through uncommon sense methods. Mostly likely soldiers can carry weapons in the towns surrounding the post (and many do), and yet the streets don't run red with blood, so why the thoughts that they would on post is an anathema to me. We all hope that no on-post shooting will ever occur again, but when it does where will the talk of liability be then when a process exists for soldiers to defend themselves yet that process isn't exercised/followed?

I had it tough enough standing in the CO's office watching a troop receive UCMJ, not take it well. I was always keeping a close eye for movements that would lead to the troop bringing a weapon into play. Paranoia some would say and after 35 years and seeing some very special "JOE'S" in uniform I called it preventive paperwork.

SGM Erik Marquez "Some of the top reasons are safety concerns, the prohibitive costs of use-of-force and weapons training and qualification costs," this quote I love. I was not Army, I was Navy. As part of the combat systems department, firearms qualifications were a requirement as we were expected to be a part of the ship security force. The point is that the number of qualified marksmen across the services is going to be lower than the number of non qualified personnel. Use of force could be incorporated into initial marksmanship training, reducing the cost. It basically sounds like any excuse to avoid having armed service members outside a combat zone. When a person joins the armed forces (regardless of branch) they are accepting that they may be asked to die in defense of their nation. They are not expecting to be gunned down by a wack job who doesn't like uniforms, or jihadi joe who decided he wants to trade shoot up a base for his 72 virgins. The point is that like in the civilian world, there is not always going to be an armed base security person around to defend their fellow service members. There will be times when a service member is put in the situation where they have to defend themselves, and the military should not preventing them from doing so.