Posted on 07/31/2015 7:13:01 PM PDT by george76
Defense Secretary Ash Carter has given his top commanders the green light to allow more troops to carry weapons at U.S. bases, with a focus on recruiting stations, Reserve centers and other softer military targets.
Carter’s actions came two weeks after a Kuwaiti-born gunman killed four Marines and a sailor before police slayed him at the Navy reserve center in Chattanooga, Tenn.
“The tragic shooting on July 16 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, illustrates the continuing threat to DOD personnel in the U.S. homeland posed by homegrown violent extremists,” Carter wrote in a memo released Thursday by the Pentagon.
In the memo, Carter gave his service chiefs and regional command heads until Aug. 21 to submit “action plans” for beefed-up security of personnel, buildings and other physical facilities.
...
Armed citizen vigilante groups in a half dozen states started standing guard outside recruiting centers and other public military sites after the July 17 shooting rampage in Chattanooga.
In that assault, the shooter, later identified as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, fired shots from his car at an armed forces recruiting center, and then drove six miles with police in pursuit, crashed through the Navy Reserve center’s security gate, left the car and ran through a building, firing as he moved.
The government has not classified the rampage as a terrorist attack
...
Carter noted that existing Pentagon policy gives commanders at U.S. installations “the option of (employing) additional armed personnel.”
Carter said that Defense Directive 5210.6, issued April 1, 2011, under then-Secretary Robert Gates, “allows for the arming of qualified DOD personnel (not regularly engaged in law enforcement duties) based on the threat and the immediate need to protect DOD assets and lives.”
That directive says military personnel “shall be appropriately armed and have the inherent right to self-defense.”
(Excerpt) Read more at idahostatesman.com ...
Obie is getting bad polls on this. Soldiers are restless, too.
homegrown violent extremists
Ash Carter is a damned liar, and he knows it.
It’s a start but...none of this is necessary if you don’t let the enemy live in your country
Removing all the Democrats who hate the military would be difficult.
This is eyewash. It is not fundamental reform, like allowing military personnel with permits to carry while on active duty.
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