Sounds Good On Paper
Much social media fuss has been made over the last 24 hours regarding the announcement by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth that military service members who are off-duty may request permission to carry personal defensive firearms. He explained this in a video posted to his X account:
Sounds great, right? Well, it might be. And it might not. The DoW memo referenced in the announcement still describes some limitations to this new policy. I was hoping to be able to read the contents of the actual memorandum and post a copy here, but it appears that all we have to go on so far is Hegseth’s social media video and the announcement posted of the DoW website.
But from those sources, the first concern that jumps out at me is that Hegseth doesn’t authorize carry outright, but says that service members may “request to carry privately owned firearms.” So essentially Hegseth is making military bases “may issue”. As we all know, the persistent problem with “may issue” is that by definition, it includes the possibility of “may not.” To be fair, according to the DoW website, such requests are to be considered under a “presumption of approval,” which is encouraging.
Hegseth’s guidance continues to state that denials from commanders must be in writing and explain in detail why the request was denied. That sounds great, too…until you consider what that process might look like in actual practice. I will tell you that on the whole, military commanders will be looking for ways to deny troops permission to carry. There are many reasons for this, but a big one is the fact that as a commander, you are held responsible for everything the unit does or fails to do, and every commander knows that if one of his troops has an incident with a firearm on post, he will be in his boss’s office explaining why. The best way to avoid this possibility is to just say no.
But how to do that while complying with SecWar’s guidance? Here’s what I envision happening. Most (if not all) commanders at the installation level have access to a JAG office (military lawyers), a Provost Marshal (military law enforcement), and a PAO (public affairs office). The installation commander will direct those three entities to get together and draft him a defensible letter of denial that will be used as a boilerplate document to routinely deny these requests.
This means that Hegseth now faces the decision whether or not to override such a denial made by an installation commander. This is problematic for a couple of reasons, the first being that it places him in the position of taking a reasoned denial, written by military lawyers and cops, and vetted by military PR types for perception, and ignoring it. While I don’t think Hegseth is the type to shrink from this sort of decision, I have my doubts that he will be personally reviewing these actions. I suspect that he will delegate such review authority to a subordinate officer or office, which may not be quite as bold. In short, I see lots of denials being submitted to DoW and upheld by same. Maybe not, but I fear this is the likely outcome.
My second concern is that it only applies to service members who are off-duty. It does not apply to anyone else on the installation such as civilian employees, dependents, and contractors, and it doesn’t apply to military personnel who are on-duty. This means that during the normal duty day, no one is allowed to be armed. I suppose we can hope that any attacks on military bases occur after hours, but to quote Minnesota Fats, “that’s not the way to bet.”
I’m not trying to be a wet blanket, because it is absolutely a move in a positive direction for the 2A rights of our military members, and I’m enough of a grown-up to accept a win as a win…no matter how small. But I do want to temper the expectations of those who are saying that this marks the end of military bases as “gun free zones,” because it is far from that. There are still far too many restrictions and conditions placed on the right to keep and bear arms for the people who guarantee ours. Hegseth’s order removes one of those…maybe. Still, I am hopeful that some bold commanders will approve requests to carry on their bases, and help move the Overton Window a little farther in our favor…but that remains to be seen. Fingers crossed.