Since 2008, at least 34 service-members and civilians have died in multiple-casualty shootings at military facilities. Dozens more have been injured. Fort Hood, Little Rock, the Washington Navy Yard, Fort Hood again, and Chattanooga — the names are sadly familiar, with at least three attackers apparently sharing jihadist motivations.
Reading the accounts of these attacks, they tend to share the same, terrible storylines. In each case there’s a deadly lag between the time of the attack and the first police response; in each case trained (but unarmed) warriors either desperately try to scramble to safety or throw themselves at attackers in suicidal, hopeless charges. In only one instance — at Chattanooga — is there evidence that a service-member fired shots in self-defense, and in that case he may have actually defied Department of Defense directives to attempt to save his own life and the lives of others.
It has never made much sense to mandate that America’s military bases and recruiting centers become, in essence, gun-free zones, where our most well-trained men and women live largely under the protection of civilian police. In 1992, when President George H. W. Bush’s administration implemented the policy, American soldiers were under threat from Islamic terrorists as they are now. Today, the nonsensical nature of the policy is just even more obvious, when we know that ISIS, al-Qaeda, and so-called “lone wolf” jihadists are actively seeking to kill American soldiers here at home.
Thankfully, years overdue, the Department of Defense is taking steps to increase security and may at long last allow at least some of our warriors to defend themselves. Last Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter issued a two-page memorandum in response to the “ongoing threat” from the deadly euphemism of the month, “Homegrown Violent Extremists.” In the memo, he noted that existing Pentagon policy includes the “option of additional armed personnel” for “security, law enforcement, and counterintelligence duties.” In other words, there is already some leeway to implement basic security measures (which raises a separate question as to why “additional armed personnel” hadn’t already been deployed). But he went further, directing “all Components to consider any additional protection measures including changes to policies and procedures that protect our force against the evolving threat.” He gave a short timeline, indicating that he wants to review proposals by August 21, in less than three weeks.
