Several states are posting armed guards in front of Army recruiting offices as a result of the Chattanooga shootings. Does this send a good and reassuring message to future enlistees?
My thinking is that posting police and armed guards to protect military recruitment offices is not sending a positive and welcoming message to potential enlistees. Yes, the kids are volunteering to join a military service where they will learn to use weapons. But having an armed guard outside a military recruitment office sends (to me) a message of fear and defensiveness, not one of power.
The secondary question – is posting such an armed guard ‘closing the barn door after the sheep have escaped’? Seems like we are proactively planning for last week’s attack.
Are there armed guards at all movie theaters these days?
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I’m honestly a little surprise they weren’t armed before.
After what has occurred, the military would be remiss if they didn’t put out guards. Just think of the press if they didn’t and it happened again in the same week? Now, that would keep people from coming in and joining up. Who wants to be part of such a schlock outfit—a military that can’t even protect it’s own, or worse yet: Doesn’t give enough of a shit about it’s Non-Coms to do so?
ISIS has been encouraging attacks against military establishments for a while now. There is an executive order that military personnel can not carry weapons routinely in a domestic activity. Consequently they are threatened but not able to defend themselves. There was actually a sign on the recruitment office that said no firearms allowed. Kinda makes the occupants sitting ducks. Unless the executive order is retracted they have to be protected by civil authorities (Police) or left unprotected altogether.
Just a quick update that this may not be an executive or but rather a Defense Department regulation. I stand corrected.
I pass walking by a Navy and Army recruiting office once in a while. I don’t prefer it but reasonable response is to arm these recruiters inside. Limit visibility instead of armed guards.
That would make sense. A soldier with a side arm wouldn’t look out of place but armed guards at the door would.
No, and hopefully it is just a knee-jerk reaction that will fade away with the passage of time; not unlike the soldiers with automatic weapons that were stationed outside of all airports large and small after 9/11 that disappeared within the next couple of years.
I think it’s neutral. I would think most people going into those recruitment centers are signing up to be armed soldiers. Why should they be deterred by an armed soldier or guard of some sort?
At he same time I know more than one person who joined the service with no plans of fighting, but who knows how it actually turned out once they were in.
This might entice a certain kind of person to join up. They might see this as the defenders of the constitution under fire.
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