USA Today
The overriding concern of those who wrote the rule was safety — the idea that ubiquitous guns, mixed with young soldiers in stressful conditions, could lead not just to accidental shootings but also to fistfights escalating to gunfire, or to more suicides, which already plague the military.
As horrific as mass shootings are at military installations, they're rare. Starting with the 2009 spree at Fort Hood by Maj. Nidal Hasan, there have been three in five years.
The hypocrisy is blatant in this case. Pro-gun fanatics are screaming in unison for guns on military bases because of the extremely rare mass shootings. Yet, the rare nature of accidental child deaths is the very reason they object to safe storage laws. In fact, according to them, the 30,000+ gunshot deaths each year are rare in comparison to the number of gun owners, therefore no additional restrictions are required.
But now, military personnel need to be armed.
The USA Today article mentioned suicides. Of course the extremists insist that gun availability makes no difference in suicide rates. And when that bizarre cop-out doesn't work, they say it's a person's right to kill themselves if they want to - it's a free person's right to decide.
But, I would think that reasonable people who are concerned with soldier suicides and who have no gun bias clouding their opinion, agree, allowing guns on state-side military bases would result in more suicides not less.
