Secretary of Defense Robert Gates released this memo today detailing the final review of the recommendations offered by the report, “Protecting the Force: Lessons Learned from Fort Hood.” (pdf)
Gates also wanted to make sure that top quality healthcare was provided “to both our service members and our healthcare providers.”
Super-duper.
There is one part of the memo that stuck out in my mind. It was the sentence “The Department will make every effort to safeguard civil liberties as it develops these policies and programs.”
Civil liberties? I can only assume he is talking about the ever touchy subject of “profiling.”
That’s insulting considering this massacre could have been crushed if liberalism hadn’t already limited the soldiers’ civil liberties:
When Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan started shooting up the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, Pfc. Marquest Smith dove under a desk. A.P. reports that “he lay low for several minutes, waiting for the shooter to run out of ammunition and wishing he, too, had a gun.”
Neither Smith nor the other victims of Hasan’s assault had guns because soldiers on military bases within the United States generally are not allowed to carry them. Last week’s shootings, which killed 13 people and wounded more than 30, demonstrated once again the folly of “gun-free zones,” which attract and assist people bent on mass murder instead of deterring them.
Why isn’t granting soldiers the right to bear arms one of the changes being made? How is limiting a trained military member’s Second Amendment rights not considered an infringement of their civil liberties?
How is it that I could get a concealed carry permit in Missouri, drive to Texas and walk around with a concealed weapon, but someone who has far more experience and specialized training is not allowed to carry a sidearm under their shirt on Fort Hood?
If you are going to look out for the civil liberties, look out for all of them, not just the politically correct ones? How about we let people who are trained marksmen actually bear arms? The Second Amendment is a civil liberty, after all.
Or are we actually saying it’s too dangerous to give soldiers guns?
