Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Unbelievable - Guards at the Navy base are unarmed, and dead!

Clinton should be sued, then hung.

Bofum.

A guy I worked (LEO)with had served in the Navy. When he was going through firearms training he had no clue as to what was the muzzle or magazine of his freshly issued Glock 22. Even after his mandatory classroom training to familiarize himself with his Glock.
At the range we got him up and running. I asked him what type of weapon(s) was he trained on in the Navy. His response “I never fired a gun in the Navy”. I thought he was just fooling around. He told me that he never fired any weapon in the Navy and that included basic training.
I was floored.

This post somes it up rather precisely IMO.

I worked the gates and other on-base posts at Camp Pendleton in late 1971 or early 1972 as an MP. While on duty I carried a 1911A1 with one mag and 5 bullets. Checked it out and back in at the Provost Marshal armory going on and off duty. You had better come back off your duty post with 5 rounds. Our Sergeant kept a stash of ammo, so if you worked one of the posts out in the boondocks and cranked off a round at a coyote, he’d give you a replacement round. I was a PFC or Lance Corporal back then.

I remember that we did have a round chambered, since we had to clear the weapon upon return to the armory.

Only nervous moment we ever had was when a PX or whatever got robbed and a car with armed robbers was heading toward our gate. I was wishing for more than 5 rounds at the time. They didn’t make it to our gate.

I get the feeling that most of the Stateside military doesn’t get much weapon training these days. A granddaughter married a Captain in the Army Rangers, and they came to visit, and the guy was not a very good shot. He said they don’t shoot much. I’m thinking the NCO’s can shoot, but the officers drink coffee.

Another young lady brought her fiancé to visit, and he was with SWAT in a big city. He was impressive. He outshot me with just about every rifle and handgun I have. That guy could shoot. I guess they practice.

So insane. Reminds me of the Marines, during the Beirut truck bombing, having been required to carry unloaded M-16 rifles to guard their base of operations in 1984.

Wow, issued nightsticks and flashlights.


What, no brass knuckles?

Me too. And a m9

in the 70's, I was supposed to carry a completely unloaded .45, guarding nuke misses that were "not' in S korea. I was 150 miles from one of the "hottest" borders in the world, and if somebody had made a scene, we could have been unable to deny that we had the nukes there.Nobody's M15 was loaded, either. The mags were full of sand and stuffed sideways into the pouches (20 rders) cause you could get in one more mag that way. It would tear out your fingernails to extract a mag, I am not kidding! Something like melting the warheads by dousing the solid rocked fuel bodies with diesel fuel and setting them alight would have caused major problems for the US, and could easily have been done. Some of my buddies were much closer to the DMZ and said the same thing. I put the mag in the 1911 and left the chamber empty cause I was constantly working on my draws, mag swaps, dryfiring and cycling the slide. I was a dog handler at an ADA Nike Hercules site, Brigade HQ was at Camp Humphries, K6. Dog handlers work only at night, and we had no lifers around. at 9 pm, the Katusa on guard at the gate to the launcher site had no key to let anyone in. All he could do was call the Green Ready room and the SOG would drive a jeep down there and let in any officers, etc, who he personally knew (and nobody else) We'd tie up the dogs and go to sleep. It was the same all over Korea. They are more afraid of negligent firings, and nut-jobs/drunks shooting someone than they are enemy attacks. My partner (I was not with him) managed to put a .45 rd down his leg one night. He was back on crutches the next day and was fine in a month or so. I know of another such .45 case, same result. I also know of a couple of .22 hits to the legs, which almost ruined guy's lives. took them many months to be able to walk right again..

Hey, that is interesting.

Some day you are going to make a blow-up doll very lucky.

I don`t know where he went through basic,but at Great Lakes we were trained with 1911A1s and Garands.

So, Jorge, do you know how many armed personnel were close to the building at the time of the attack?

If none, then why so?

MM

Well, get back in your time capsule, Rambo-light. Today not only are all armed personnel ordered to carry in Condition One, but ROEs have been opened up, allowing for much greater flexibility.

I do not. This much I can tell you. Police HQ is about a quarter mile away and there at least three mobile patrols plus a Watch Commander, all within three to five minutes from anywhere on base and in my view, they FAILED miserably.

In the AF the guards are armed. This makes no sense why the Navy doesn't do that.

Ctsmith: Thanks for that link/info!
Sad.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

NAS Pensacola has a history of being firearm friendly. When I was stationed there back in the early 1990s, you could advertise your personal firearms for sale in the base newspaper. I bought my 1974 Walther PP from a guy in base housing. Saw his ad in the base paper, called him, then drove over and picked it up, cash and carry. No paperwork, no muss, no fuss. But we were both red-blooded Americans, so there was never any problem. The Clinton's put a stop to that however. Lots of communists and foreigners roaming about now. Everyone is at risk. Just think about all the murders of our GIs committed in Afghanistan by "supposed" friendly muzzies.

I was in the AF for almost 6 years before I had any sort of firearms training with live fire. In Basic Training, we were introduced to the M1 Carbine and spent a rainy day in the barracks learning to strip and reassemble, memorize parts of the carbine, etc. We were supposed to go to the range for a day to fire, but were in the tail end of a huge tropical storm, entire base was flooded, real gully washer so range day was cancelled. In 1964 I was in Japan and got a 6 month TDY to Thailand and Laos so we fired the M1 Carbine before going. Got down there and found that we absolutely could NOT have any firearms whatsoever, some treaty thing.

Holy crap!

Those were the sorriest excuse for weapons I ever saw. At one base the CO wanted to start a pistol team for quasi local competition with other bases. They decided I was the guy who would be best to do it. They gave me boxes (big cases that oranges got shipped in) full of 1911s. Couldn't hardly lift the damn boxes. Cases and cases of ammo. I spent a few days trying to find enough of them to make a team's worth. We had no armorer. We didn't even have a gunners mate. We did not have a machine shop I could use. I had to soak a bunch of the damn things in diesel fuel to get them to where they could be shot for testing. Not a one of them was accurate enough for competition, and most couldn't hit paper at 25 feet. If I could have found 10 that were sort of accurate I could have taken them into town where I knew a gunsmith with the tools get them on paper. I never did fire any of the watch duty 1911s I carried, but based on what those orange boxes showed me I sure as hell wasn't going to bet anything on them firing much less accurately.

Of all the weapons the USN gave me to shoot, I liked only three. M1s and Model 12s. Both were dependable and both were accurate enough for their purposes. 1922 Springfields were uniformly very accurate and I would gladly have bought one if I could have.

Y'all talking about in peacetime military not being exposed much to small arms training, I've got a better story than that. My father joined the navy in 1942. He spent his time until discharged in 1945 in the Pacific. In 1944 and 45 a good bit of time was on Jap contested islands repairing landing craft. He said that they were rushed through boot camp in San Diego so fast that small arms training was skipped entirely. He never had a single day of rifle or pistol training, not even drill. When he became a petty officer and had watch duty, he was issued a .45 for the watch and told how to load and fire it, but never had any practice at all. However, he was trained on 20 mm, 40 mm, and 3 in. guns. I have always thought that very odd.