Only Military and Police should have guns

Status
Not open for further replies.
negligent discharges were shockingly common and some resulted in injuries, and there were lost guns. In the Army as a whole, including the Military Police and Criminal Investigation Division (CID), the misconduct and assaults is staggering, including negligent discharges and horseplay resulting in deaths, murders, assaults, sex assaults, thefts of guns, breaking and entering, etc.
Click to expand...

You do realize that this statement could be taken a completely different way by the anti-gunners? I wouldn't use it in an argument.

Anti-gunner response:
So...you're saying that EVEN our highly trained police and military make tons of mistakes that result in deaths? Then why would we want civilians playing with them? Sounds too dangerous for the common man.
 
My guess is that the average participant on this forum is far better trained and prepared to use a gun than the average LEO. One of my sons was a street cop in a big city for a few years. He often remarked how few of his fellow officers ever went to the range, other than the twice yearly qualification shooting. The qualification shooting, he related, was at a paper target about 3 yards out and than as long as your rounds hit the large paper target you were OK. For awhile he worked with a female officer who was afraid of guns, and carried her service weapon unloaded, despite the risk of discipline had she been discovered doing so. He liked going to the range and felt professionally obligated to be a reasonably good marksman with his sidearm, but admitted he was ridiculed by some fellow officers for being so concerned with his ability to shoot straight. My point of this is that many cops are poorly trained and prepared and have no special skills as compared to the public. And as for the military, I served 24 years in the Army and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. But being in the Medical Service Corps, I was only required to be "familiarized" with my issue weapon by firing 4 or 5 rounds downrange every other year or so if I recall. Hardly what you would call being proficient. And since most of the military are not combat soldiers, my experience may not be atypical.
 
I'd say you are totally correct there vito. The majority of today's military is not a combatant force.

Other than the annual of bi-annual qualification, I never carried a weapon in the line of duty in my 20 year military career.

Years ago I discovered if you passed the "we like you" test, civilians were allowed to shoot at the local PDs range if no training exercises were otherwise being conducted. Couldn't count how many cops couldn't hit a bull's butt with a bass fiddle.

The military and police forces are attractive career paths to folks who want a secure job and a pension. Not a general indictment, but you know what I mean.
 
In the worst form of pandering many states allow CC permits to military or those honorably discharged when as has been pointed out the majority have had little or no real training with firearms not to mention handguns and civilian doctrine of carry. My understanding of the NYS laws also allow LEO to buy and own private forbiden weapons and mags while employed and I'm betting other restrictive states do likewise.
Having 2 sons in the military I hear a lot about how little some know or care about the use of firearms and how that goes for the instutional structure as well.
I am not trying to endorse strict civilian training but more point out my agreement with the op. Military and police that like and know guns probably gained much of that background prior or exclusive to their service and make the extra effort to keep and hone those skills exclusive to their regular required training.
 
Whenever I hear someone say that only the Police should be allowed to have handguns, I wonder if they have ever considered the "black market" aspect.
Lets say as of January 1, 2013, no civilian is allowed to buy, own, or posses a handgun. For the Cop on the street that means that the $500 Glock on his hip is sudenly worth $5000 on the black market. Think he feels safer now? :confused:
 
While I probably haven't spent as much time around soldiers with live rounds as you, I didn't see a ND either at Infantry school or after almost eight years in the Guard.
Click to expand...
When I was in Korea in '80-'81, just about EVERY time the Ammo Holding Area (AHA) guards at Camp Howze were issued live rounds, there were unauthorized shooting incidents.

Of course that was Mr. Carter's Army, the ranks often looked like the bar scene in Star Wars, and "discipline" was an exotic concept, not unlike the Higgs boson...
 
It's falsely assumed that because you are military or police you know how to shoot. In a broad sense that's true and in fact anyone can shoot a gun, an opposable thumb being the only requirement. The problem we encounter is the proficiency of the shooter. Proficiency is acquired through constant practice under all conditions not once or twice a year in comfortable surroundings.


BTW two things.

After my qualifications in Basic I got to the range once a year if the funding was there. We never went to qualify but to familiarize yourself with the gun and noise it made.


The Higgs Boson is no longer exotic so to speak.
 
Last edited:
With 16 years of active duty military, I can absolutely corroborate the OP's statements. First time I saw a ND was a Fort Riley where a tanker let off a .50 Cal round off the top of an M1 Abrams, narrowly missing the loader who was standing on the front of the tank.

I saw & heard several instances in Iraq of AD's into clearing barrels. I watched a soldier ND at a range at Fort Bragg. In Afghanistan, I watched (and jumped back 10 feet in a single bound) when a soldier stitched the ground in front of my vehicle upon exiting the back of his vehicle with a M240 machine gun (in front of a school, I might add). I've seen a soldier draw his weapon from the arms room and discover that it had a round in the chamber. I just heard a story last week from a fellow soldier about the time he accidentally discharged his CCW while off-post in a Target store.

On the other hand, I've been deployed for a combined total of almost 3 years and have rubbed shoulders with thousands of soldiers, 100% of whom were armed with a rifle or handgun or both, either locked and loaded or at the minimum with a loaded magazine in (chamber empty). During that time, I've never seen a gun go off by itself and in spite of the stories I mentioned above, I've never seen anyone injured by a ND or AD. That being the case, I wish that we were trusted with weapons and ammo back in the US so that things like the Ft Hood shooting could be prevented.

Another pertinent point - do you know where our top-trained soldiers, such as Special Forces and other special operations folks, go to get their top-tiered training? Many of them go to civilian-run shooting schools! Granted, the civilians at most civilian shooting schools are prior-military or prior-police, but the point remains that civilians can be and are just as highly trained as our highest trained military soldiers. Also, every soldier is a civilian both before and after being in the military. Also, as other posters mentioned, if you shoot more than 100 rounds a year, you have more shooting experience than 95% of all soldiers (although some soldiers also enjoy shooting in their off time).
 
I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.

--William S. Burroughs
 
My guess is that the average participant on this forum is far better trained and prepared to use a gun than the average LEO. One of my sons was a street cop in a big city for a few years. He often remarked how few of his fellow officers ever went to the range, other than the twice yearly qualification shooting. The qualification shooting, he related, was at a paper target about 3 yards out and than as long as your rounds hit the large paper target you were OK
Click to expand...

That varies tremendously from department to department. My agency's academy ran a firearms training program, especially with handguns, that compared favorably to the training I got during the secret squirrel days of my .mil career when I was assigned to support the cool kids with beards and all the fun toys. Our qual course is a pretty involved course of fire involving engagements out to 25 meters, movement drills and various manipulation drills and assorted other bells and whistles and tight timelines that demand a shooter demonstrate real proficiency and competence with his or her weapon. And we qualify quarterly, not annually or twice yearly.

. . . But, bullets cost money, and funding all that weapons training is a big political football that the department leadership has to run past city government when they pretty routinely start looking for ways to save money. I can see that fight getting lost a lot in other locations where the politics run more liberal and/or it's harder to point out a serious threat environment (i.e. Chicago and NYC are "gun free zones" ;) whereas here in AK we have the highest per capita firearms ownership in the nation and police officers and AST troopers deal with armed law abiding citizens and criminal suspects daily.)
 
I was wokring at a school one time, and there was a teacher there who was from India. He told me how much safer he felt in India compared to the United States because only the police and the military had guns. Almost immediately after he told me that, he stated that the only bad thing about India was how corrupt police and the military were...

My thoughts are that the police and military are corrupt because they are the only people with guns...but I was wrong once before.
 
Those who put forth this arguement do not _care_ that it is incorrect.

It is all about disarming the lawful citizens. Not safety. Not violence. Not crime.
 
I agree with all other comments so far. Another question to ask in regards to the military or police is, "What's to keep any member of LE or the military from going stir crazy and opening fire on civilians?" Just because they play that role that does not make them immune to mental instability, especially considering that their jobs would be considered high stress jobs to most. I don't know about you guys but quite frankly I do not feel comfortable with the LE and military being the only ones allowed to have arms. As far as I am concerned, if we have to get rid of ours then they should get rid of theirs. I mean we won't need any LE or military to carry guns after we all disarm, right? We will all be safe and violent free then so why do they need weapons? **cough cough**
 
k_dawg said:
Those who put forth this arguement do not _care_ that it is incorrect.

It is all about disarming the lawful citizens. Not safety. Not violence. Not crime.
Click to expand...
We have a winner. Either that or they are so utterly brain washed or lazy they don't want to have any personal accountability.
 
Romeo 33 Delta said:
Only police should have guns ... like a former Chief in a nearby city who managed to shoot himself in the hand while cleaning his personal pistol.

Apparently I'm a more responsible gun owner, having in 58 years of continuous gun ownership (age: 68) NEVER shot myself, NEVER had an "ND/AD", NEVER wounded or killed anyone (except for my time as a Combat infantryman in 1968).

The Elitists just make me shake my head!
Click to expand...
I live in a suburb 30 miles outside a major city, we still are fairly rural though.
The biggest news around here was about 6 months ago when a lifelong decorated cop, the training and safety officer for his department barricaded himself in his ex wife's house. He held off our whole department including a tracked APC for a day with a sniper rifle and shot a cop. A few months after that a cop from a neighboring (south) town shot himself in his body armor claiming he was attacked in a bid for attention. About a year prior in a another neighboring town (north) an active duty soldier went AWOL and hunted down and killed his wife and inlaws.

I'm pretty comfortable with civilians having guns as well... All we get our hands on.
 
I agree with everyone's posts here too, my time in active Army units were sprinkled with all kinds of ADs (failures of rodding off the range, clearing in the arms room, getting ready to board deployment buses for the aircraft, etc.)
But further to the OP's point, soldiers and police are human and don't have any sort of magical cloak of perfection for gun safety or rational behavior. What's the current percentage of missed shots for police discharges? 60% misses? Hell, I was in an artillery unit that had a pretty good reputation for shelling our own on-post housing units at least once a year. We're talking about people shooting their fingers with a .22? Try 155mm landing in someone's front yard; that becomes criminally negligent pretty quickly.
Soldiers and police are people too. No better, and sometimes worse. Definitely not magical.
 
valnar said:
You do realize that this statement could be taken a completely different way by the anti-gunners? I wouldn't use it in an argument.

Anti-gunner response:
So...you're saying that EVEN our highly trained police and military make tons of mistakes that result in deaths? Then why would we want civilians playing with them? Sounds too dangerous for the common man.
Click to expand...

Heh!

More likely, they'll push for total disarming of the police and military. After all, the ONLY reason a bad guy would have to shoot at them is because they have guns in the first place, right?

At least, that's the argument of some anti-military people...if we just lay down our arms and walk away, people will leave us alone.
 
Police Officers cannot always be trusted to use their weapons properly either.There are members of the public whom are better trained & focused than they are.Polititions are so annoying.
 
Last edited:
I really don't like the term AD. Can anyone point to a single incident where a weapon went off accidentaly without human error? I.E. ND vs. AD? Not a range malfunction but an honest to god "It just went off, I never touched it." If a gun goes of without you wanting it to then 99.999% of the time it means you screwd up, barring freak mechanical failure of a well maintained weapon.
 
I watched my MG instructor have an ND while showing us how to load the M2, the round pasted maybe two feet to the left of me and I lost all hearing in my left ear for a couple days and only about 50% returned.
My SSgt while in my Unit's CQB Platoon had a 16 round ND when he was playing with his M-4 and flipped it to full-auto.
And I have a friend from High School who was killed by an ND in Iraq. His Platoon Sgt didn't check everyone's weapon when they came back into the FOB and his friend came up to talk to him while trying to unload his M-16.
 
Former military myself. I've seen both the best and the worst of weapon handling skills. Everything from walking out of the arms room shortly before a 230gr ball went bouncing around inside said arms room to the ND of an M-16 right into a carrier elevator. Into the deck, that is, thankfully not through the hangar bay.

I've also seen pros at work with handling skills under stress that make me look like a slacker.
 
I thank every one that is sound of mind and has a clean record should have a gun if they want one! If never had one give them a gun handling course.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Grandpa Shooter
  • Locked
Special treatment for military and police?
Replies
21
Views
848
Grandpa Shooter
Grandpa Shooter
A
  • Locked
San Fransisco police officer arrested on suspicion of making prohibited assault rifle
2
Replies
37
Views
3K
Librarian
Librarian
B
  • Locked
Police weapons accidents in the UK
Replies
3
Views
503
Onmilo
Onmilo
K
  • Locked
Village Bans Police Gun Carry
2 3
Replies
53
Views
3K
Tommy Gunn
T
D
  • Locked
(NY) Gun in Oven Shoots Woman
2
Replies
29
Views
3K
cordex
C
Back
Top