It’s pretty obvious this Army Chief of Staff is grasping at straws with his statements about the soldiers he commands. He sounds like he’s just another puppet for Obama. Perhaps if our military had been armed in the Chattanooga terror attack there would be no loss of life. We now know that against military rules there were armed soldiers who could have saved lives by killing the terrorist. I can’t help but think that if ALL of these soldiers had been armed they could have stopped this terrorist in his tracks.
Support for allowing military personnel to carry firearms for self-protection following the terrorist attack upon military personnel in Chattanooga last week has been strongly declared by several presidential candidates, is building in Congress, and has already taken shape for National Guardsmen in several states. However, the same can’t be said for the usual and not-so-usual suspects.
In his off-the-cuff remarks about the Chattanooga attack, President Obama said only that he would consider “what further precautions we can take in the future.”
We have come to expect such as this from Obama. However, we expect better from the Army Chief of Staff, even one that Obama hand-picked for the job. On Friday, July 17, USNews.com reported that Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno appeared to oppose allowing military personnel to be armed, saying “we have to be careful about over-arming ourselves,” because of the possibility of “accidental discharges and everything else that goes along with having weapons that are loaded that causes injuries.” In making such a statement, Odierno not only expresses a demoralizing lack of confidence in the soldiers he commands, he also inspires a lack of soldiers’ confidence in his ability to lead, because accidental discharges are reduced by training, and training is something for which he, as Chief of Staff, is ultimately responsible.
Expressing an even greater lack of faith in our troops—though considering the source, no one in uniform should consider it worthy of the term “insult”—is the editorial arm of Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety. On Monday, Bloomberg’s TheTrace.org said that advocating that military personnel carry guns for protection is nothing more than a “political sound bite” that “does not hold up well under fact-checking.”
On to the substance of TheTrace’s claims, the website says, “Most service members . . . are not in direct combat roles, but instead are technical workers whose specialties support those ‘tip of the spear’ troops. These include navigators, supply clerks, water purification specialists, and camera crews.” This only demonstrates the anti-gunners’ profound ignorance of military operations during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Throughout those conflicts, combat support, combat service support and other troops not in infantry roles participated in countless missions, often alongside their infantry counterparts, took fire, and returned it.
Furthermore, many Americans in the active-duty and reserve armed forces have their own firearms, attend training courses, practice extensively, and participate in defensive skills-based marksmanship competitions. Arguably, military personnel today are more skilled with small arms than at any time in U.S. history.
