McDonald Decision and CCW on Military Bases

I joined the Army. Guess what? I have whatever Constitutional rights the Army, in its wisdom, decides that I have.
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Yep, exactly right. You do not have the same right as civilians. And you signed a legal contract agreeing to that. Free Speech, gun rights, rights against search and seizure, etc,.. ALL the rights afforded to civilian citizens under our Constitution are in abeyance for you, as long as you remain in military service.

Everyone in the service is in the same boat. And we all volunteered to be there. If no one explained that to you before you went in, they should have.
 
On any stateside military post I've been stationed in the last 21 years, the rules went like this:

1. If you PLAN on bringing a firearm on post, you MUST register it first with the PMO. You should call that posts PMO and ask if they want you to bring the unloaded weapon with you for serial number verification. Some posts let you bring the weapon that one time, others do not.

2. After registering your firearm(s) with the PMO, there are only two things you can do. Transport that weapon directly to your unit's Arms Room OR, transport it directly to the range, if there is one for civilian guns. Fort Campbell and Fort Rucker both had firing ranges for civilian and military use.

3. In an overseas assignment, if the host country, like South Korea, bans handguns for the civilians, you cannot bring yours with you. I ended up taking a very nice handgun air pistol with me and had no issues with having it. But the locals treated it like we would treat a weapon on post. It must be locked and in the trunk of your car. The ammo must be in plain view somewhere in the vehicle you're transporting the weapon in. In Korea, if you got pulled over and didn't tell the KNP's that you had an airgun in the trunk, God help you if they see your ammo after they've first talked to you. They are funny little people about weapons which I think is "funny" considering they've got 1 million North Korean's chomping at the bit to kill them.

As a civilian, ANY TIME you enter a military post, you give up your right to certain search and seizure rights you would normally have off post. In other words, if an MP tells you to stop, he wants to search your car, and you've got dope in there, you're screwed. Because they can search and seize at any time, any where on post, for any reason. When it comes up in court and the judge asks why the MP pulle dyou over to search your car, it's common to hear the NCO say, "I was taking the opportunity to teach PFC Snuffy here how to do it properly. Then we found weapons and dope." The judge looks at you and says, "Hope you brought an overnight bag."
 
What Retired said.

I retired from the US Army in 1979. I often hunt and shoot on FT. Sill, OK. In order to legally bring a gun on the base it must be registered. Several of my guns are registered: This procedure has been in force for decades. Registration is done at the Vehicles and Weapons Registration Branch. It is a Pentagon database.

The hunter/shooter is given two copies of the private weapons registration form. This form must be carried in the vehicle when hunting or shooting.

At most US Army posts; the DOD police and MPs conduct security checks of parking lots. If a vehicle is unlocked it may be searched. If an unregistered weapon is found in an unlocked vehicle the owner is in trouble. At the very least there will be a trip to the US magistrate.
 
It's been long established that the military is its own separate society and has to be that way to accomplish what they need to do. As a result they have to default to their lowest common denominator to maintain control and like any other govt organization, common sense need not apply.

I agree that there are a lot of commanders who are panty-waists about personally owned firearms and that the military in general seems to be that way.

But guess what? If you don't like it, don't sign up or re-up when your committment is up and if you're non-military, stay away from their sphere of influence.
 
For whatever it might be worth, my own personal experiences, as a civilian, with rifles and handguns on military bases are as follows.

Re rifle competition at MCB Quantico, Fort Barry, Marin County, Calif., Mare Island MCB, Vallejo, Calif. MCAS Cherry Point, N.C., Camp LeJeune, N.C., Fort Lee, Va., now and then, to enter Cherry Point, one needed a pass, obtained by showing vehicle registration. At other places mentioned, nobody, in-so-far as memory serves, ever asked question #1.

Going to a small pistol range in an odd corner of Camp LeJeune, the only thing the MP's said was "drive carefully sir". Admittedly, this was a number of years back, and things might have changed.

Re "things might have changed", the following attributed to P.O. Ackley comes to mind. Ackley supposedly offered, on the subject of change, "while change indicated movement, it is not necessarily movement in the direction of improvement", which always struck me as an interesting thought..
 
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Talking about a different country and different armed forces here, i.e. Italy.

I had for some reasons a CCW, but when entering the barracks I had to surrender the weapon at the guard (in the end we agreed to the armoury, just on the next building).

The rationale was that I was carrying for my own defense, but in a barracks I was supposed to be defended enough by the guards.

All the other military who had a CCW or had a weapon permit related to sport or hunting left their personal weapons at the armoury when entering the barracks.

Good thing was that the armourer was a real gun nut and did manteinance, tuning and general pampering of our personal shooting irons even better than he did with the issued weapons.....

K.
 
The problem here is the federal government and all it's ridiculous inconsistancies. Why can I fly on a comercial flight into Camp Lejeune from Iraq armed with an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon but I have to give up my Leatherman multi tool due to FAA regulations... inconsitency here? How about on base; Go to the armory and check out a M2 .50 cal machine gun or even a 203 grenade launcher but God forbid you carry your own 1960s .30spl.

Really the only reason you can carry a personal weapon on base is to do criminal harm, so don't bring a gun on base if you intend to follow the law.
 
The military is ruled by the Uniformed Code, not by other federal or state laws. If the local commander says "It's okay" then it would be fine (although I can't imagine one saying it and not getting relieved)....

But that's just my $0.02.
 
What was that DoD-wide policy, released in the 1990s?
Didn't that restrict the base commander's options somewhat (eliminating some ability to authorize widespread CCW, if I remember correctly.)
 
I found an Army-specific regulation from 1993, and a DoD-wide directive from 2001 that prohibit personnel from carrying on base except in the performance of their duties.

As such, local commanders pretty much have their hands tied on the matter (typically, local commanders can institute policies that are more restrictive than overarching service guidance, but not less restrictive.
 
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