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

As one member pointed out, it wasn't "guards" that got shot - it was a guy "standing watch", i.e. a "front desk clerk" for the day.
Even at Camp Lejeune or Ft. Bragg, once you pass through the front gate, you see few, if any, armed security on the rest of the base. You can drive all over the place and only a limited number of areas have armed security protection.

Fresh out of boot camp, Cameron Walters proudly told his father in Georgia during their nightly video chat that he had passed the exam qualifying him to stand watch and help secure building entrances at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida.

When news broke the next morning of shots being fired at the base, Shane Walters called his son’s cellphone repeatedly throughout the day. There was no answer. The 21-year-old airmen apprentice from Richmond Hill had been killed.....

That's Heartbreaking ☹️

personally I have no words, but plenty of disgust to go around for everyone...

Every soldier should carry a side arm on a military installation as far as I am concerned...
or use the same standards, that were used on Bases during WW2...

It also pisses me off that this Saudi was able to buy a Glock off base in FLA without being an American citizen..

The democRATs want to disarm Americans, but I guess foreign nationals isn't a problem...WTF is with that..

how does a foreign national pass a background check, like the rest of us have to?????

especially a Muslim Foreign National....military or not.

I was an ADA MP at Site Summit Alaska in the mid 70's. We carried an M16 empty and a 45 with 5 rounds. We also carried 3 magazines of 20 rounds for the M16's and 2 more 5 round 45 magazines. We could not lock and load unless there was a real threat but on night shift we would lovk and load the 45's. I was at Ft Sam Houston prior to going to Alaska and we carried 3 45 magazines with one in the gun but we couldn't lock and load. Ft Sam was an open post back then.

kwg

The military is anti-gun. Personnel are expendable.

The USN Small arms program has a rich history of ignored to decent. In Aviation Officer Candidate School in 87 we qualified with .38 Revolvers in a traditional 25 yard range with one handed formal shooting with instruction from our USMC Drill Instructors. Fun, especially for those of us that knew a bit about shooting but pretty much completely useless for what we might need a pistol for.

Desert Storm was a wake up call. We were issued 5 shot S&W .38's from Crane Naval Depot that had been packed in 1972 and were still in cosmoline. Despite direction otherwise, our air wing commander said "carry what you want" I carried a BHP, my pilot carried a Glock, the 0-4 in our crew carried the .38 and the new Lt(jg) carried the .38 but didn't load it because "loaded guns are dangerous".

For rifles the USN had zero programs. My squadron flew down to Beale AFB and traded squadron patches and hats to the USAF guys and got qualed there.

Circa 95 we started getting issued the Sig M11. Nice pistol and better yet we got to qual under some good instruction at NAS Anacosta. Full drills with reloads and off hands and different positions and from cover. Much improved and we got to do it every year. We only carried when deployed in a combat zone and when home the pistols lived in the armory.

At Naval Station Mayport, guards at the main gate are armed with sidearms and wear body armor. There is always at least one person off to the side with a rifle. Once on the base, to access the piers, there is another set of gate guards with sidearms and rifles.
Security at Naval Air Station Jacksonville doesn’t seem as tight. The main gates don’t seem to have the same requirements. Maybe it’s a NAVSEA vs. NAVAIR thing?

There was a definite "sea change" after 9/11 with the incorporation of Anti-Terrorism/Force Protection (ATFP) training in place. The Navy now makes just about ALL sailors qualify at lest twice/year as they are all incorporated into the Auxiliary Support Force (ASF) at every unit and tenant commands at all bases are required to support the base with these folks. As an example in 2002 when we deployed to OEF on board JFK, both Ship's company and the Air Wing expended about 50K rounds of 9mm on board ship. We used targets set up on Elevator #4 (port side, aft) as a target range. The problem is, thanks to the bureaucracy and TOO MANY government civilians and their rice bowls, they've made training so bureaucratic intensive (along with all the PC bullshit training), that the majority of personnel are all but worthless.

They are all held to the same standard by Commander, Naval Installations Command. Kings Bay has a combination of contract guards at all Entry Control Points and USN Master At Arms police as well as DON civilian police, but the "real stuff" is guarded by a reinforced Battalion of USMC, and the Marines REALLY train.

Those folks need hanging.

One of the funny things with the qual at Anacosta was we had to spend two hours in the classroom on the "when deadly force is authorized" section. Let's see, if I have my pistol in my hand it means I've ejected and I'm down behind enemy lines. I assure you, deadly force is authorized.

That goes EXACTLY to my point. The bureaucratic machinations we have to go through here to keep my guys qualified are INSANE..

Most of the guys I served with could not shoot. Not even a little bit. We did shoot guns, all manner of guns on at least an annual basis over in the combat zone. Not everyone shot more than either a 1911 or an M1. Few shot both and very few shot the other weapons we had available. I lead the damage assessment team if we had to go ashore to see what the 5 inch 54s accomplished and I had 4 other people with me plus a MWB coxwain. I chose them, their weapons and made sure they could shoot them. We had a few gunners mates, but they were not any of them small arms people. Most of them were mechanics to keep the mounts operating and the actual operation of the mounts when we were firing.

Basically everywhere I went in those years the guys I worked with were about like your average civilian. Officers and enlisted alike. I kept my personal weapons in a safe in the guard house on shore station and in the small arms locker on ship. I am all but certain I was the only person at any command where I was billeted who even had personal weapons of any kind. When I kept a car I could park it just outside the main gate and most of the time when I did so I left whatever weapon I had out in the car. If we had marines as part of the complement THEY could shoot at least respectably. For those years I really knew very few people who were competent with a weapon and at least 95% of the guys I served with wouldn't have known what ammo to put in which weapon, not even a clue. It would not have surprised me at all to see some people I worked with or officers I served under try to put 22 lr ammo into an M1.

So did I, except with the late, great M1 Garand ... and one "clip of eight."

L.W.

This ^ - big difference between "Guard duty" and standing watch or "CQ" (Charge of Quarters).

When I was in, we had duty days which meant that certain specific tasks that had to be performed on duty days included watches. A watch was at a specific place for normally 4 hours at a time. A watch meant you made certain anyone entering your area of watch was authorized and not unauthorized. If your watch post was a building, no one entered the building or the area without proper paperwork and if you did not challenge properly you could very well find yourself in a minor fecal matter storm and with an OOD reprimand in your record.

Duty meant crap work details that were done in addition to your watch assignments. Duty tasks generally took a couple of hours at the most.

Watch posts were armed posts. Duty work was almost always unarmed.

Watch posts on a ship were almost exclusively quarterdeck and OOD in port only. OOD at sea was unarmed and there was no quarterdeck watch.

Certain tasks done with certain equipment were required by Navy regs to have at least one armed escort regardless of at sea or in port and without regard to time of day.

I was on barracks watch one night with a 1903 Springfield (no ammo present) and I was really sick. I passed out and lay there unconscious until my hourly report was missed at which point the OOD showed up and kicked and stomped me until he figured out I was unconscious and not sleeping. At that point he called an ambulance and I woke up the next day in the hospital where I spent the next week.

Oddly perhaps, the most critically secure places I worked in 4 years had elderly (like 80 yo) civilian security guards who wouldn't have made a competent mall cop. They had absolutely zero idea of what was important and who might have access much less what anything important consisted of. Had someone come through the gates with a gun they would have had a couple of heart attacks and the bad guys would have had free reign because there were no other guns accessible legally.

While I was in school, headquarters desk watch consisted of two guys armed with 1911s and an OOD also armed. Sole options for that watch after hours were to take any calls from the front gate or any of the building watch posts and if necessary start waking up command staff. Something I do not recall happening to anyone in a year. But, we had guns and bullets just in case.

Holy fugging hell, pages of comments and only a few can grasp the difference between guard duty and standing a watch. Easy to tell who did and didn't serve their country.

I was just going to say the same thing!
There's so many f ukn armchair commanders on the internet, it's crazy.

Maybe 10 minutes for armed response at Pensacola:

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/...had-10-minutes-without-armed-resistance/