Ever notice that none of the police/military guns are loaded?

[Sergeant Sabre]

In Mosul in April-May of 2003 the 82nd Airborne was ordered to keep thier rifles in condition 4 (no magazine in the rifle). Too many ND's, I guess. Some of thier weapons handling scared me. I saw quite a few walking around without a weapon at all. This was in an area where a few wildly-fired rounds would routinely enter our perimeter every day.

A few of their Staff NCOs would try to jump on our Marines for being in condition 2. Not gonna happen, my Colonel said to keep it loaded.

 

[No_Brakes23]

Outside of training, everytime (Except one) I was issued a rifle/shotgun/pistol, we were given rounds/magazines, and expected to load the magazine. The pistol and shotgun were to be carried with a round/shell chambered, the M16A2 and M16A3 were carried magazine in, empty chamber. I have worked Ships' Defense and Ordnance Guard Duty among other things.

The one time we didn't get ammo was when we were gaurding an AV-8B Harrier II crash site in the CA/AZ desert, and the GySgt was instructed to keep the ammo and mags while we had the rifle. Before going on watch, he said, "I ain't supposed to give you this ammo for some stupid reason, but here it is in my ALICE pack, in case you need it."

That's USMC airwing 96-05, I certainly qualify as a POGue, and we carried loaded.

 

[rero360]

Thank the Good Lord above that when combat does raise it's ugly head, the smart commanders ditch the lawyer types, and break out the killers.

Hell yeah, and heres one such soldier just waiting for his chance to go to the sandbox or stan or anyother thirdworld hell hole that requires the cleaning up to ensure the rights of the populace.

 

[pbhome71]

I don't think this is new.

Where I came from, we used to do hangar sentry duty. We used our issued HK33, with 2 loaded mag, + 1 empty mag. Guess what, the empty mag went into the rifle. The 2 loaded ones stayed in mag pouch...just in case. And that, was a long long time ago.

One of the upper class man almost got shot when his buddy tried to "cleared" his weapon. Needless to say, no live round/no lock-n-load on sentry duty ever since.

-Pat