When I was there, every recruit had a 1903 Springfield with no firing pin.
I believed the entrances to gates on bases have been realigned so that someone cannot run the gate. A couple of tight curves and barriers were placed before the gate to prevent this from happening.
Well at least you could club somebody with it.
“When I was there, every recruit had a 1903 Springfield with no firing pin.”
I went to boot camp at San Diego and we had nonfunctional ‘03 rifles as drill pieces. I can understand not handing loaded rifles to recruits except at the firing range but gate guards should have real weapons.
I went in in ‘62 and the Navy did zero to train recruits for any kind of actual fighting then. We spent one day at the firing range and were given forty rounds for practice with an M-1 and forty rounds to qualify at 200 yards. I had never fired any rifle other than a .22 before but I did qualify along with four others out of a group of sixty men. Most of them left boot camp with no clue how to use a rifle, having seen Maggie’s drawers waved all day. One guy shot a better score than mine and he was a kid from New Jersey with lenses as thick as coke bottles on his glasses. He said his father had brought him up going to the NRA rifle range on weekends.
It would have been criminal to expect most of those guys to defend themselves with a firearm. I was barely capable but an expert compared to most of the others.
1903 Springfields with firing pins removed; that’s what we drilled with in the Washington High School Cadets in the 1940s. The school did have a small-bore range and rifle team.