Washington– Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday that service members will be allowed to carry them Personal weapons in military installationsciting the Second Amendment and recent shootings at bases across the country.
In a video posted to
Any denial of a service member’s request must be explained in detail and in writing, he said.
“In practice, our bases across the country were gun-free zones,” Hegseth said. “Unless you are training or unless you are a military policeman, you will not be able to carry your own firearm for your personal protection on duty.”
Questions have often arisen about why service members do not have access to weapons Shooting at military bases in the country. These shootings ranged from isolated incidents among military service members to mass casualty events, such as the shooting by an Army psychiatrist in Ford Hood, Texas, in 2009 that left 13 people dead.
Hegseth cited some of the events in his video, including A A shooting injured five soldiers at Fort Stewart In Georgia last year. Officials said the shooter, an Army sergeant working at the base, used his personal pistol before his fellow soldiers confronted and arrested him.
“In these cases, minutes are a lifetime,” Hegseth said. “Our service members have the courage and training to make those short, precious minutes count.”
Defense Department policy prohibited military personnel from carrying personal weapons on base without permission from a senior commander, with strict protocol for how firearms should be stored.
Typically, military personnel must officially check their weapons from secure storage to go to hunting areas or shooting ranges on base, and then check all firearms back immediately after their authorized use. Military police are often the only armed personnel on base, outside of shooting ranges, hunting areas or during training, where soldiers can use their service weapons without ammunition.
Tanya Schardt, senior counsel at Brady Gun Violence Prevention, said in a statement that Defense Department leaders and senior military officers opposed relaxing the current policy, which was originally enacted under President George H.W.
Noting that most active duty service members who die by suicide do so with a gun they personally own, not a military-issued one, Schardt said that “there will undoubtedly be an increase in firearm suicides and other acts of gun violence.”
While fewer U.S. service members will die by suicide in 2024, suicide rates among active-duty forces overall will still gradually rise between 2011 and 2024, according to a new study. The Pentagon report was released Tuesday.
“Our military installations are among the most guarded and protected properties in the world, and have never been ‘weapons-free zones,’” Schardt said. “If there is a problem with violent crime at these installations, the Secretary of Defense has an obligation to alert the American people and describe how he is working to prevent that crime.”