A Veteran’s Take on Gun Control

I served in the Army from 2011 to 2015. I have handled and fired AR-15s, as well as other weapons. I want to take the issue of gun control to the most basic level, so I’m not on here to give my opinion. Just the facts, so you can do with them what you will.

This is the sequence of events for using a firearm in the military:

• First, you need a specific reason (or mission) to use one. Whether it is going to the shooting range or a field exercise, or combat itself.
• Second, when you are in combat, there are Rules of Engagement. The Rules of Engagement are dictated by the UN and have their origin (with revisions since) in the aftermath of WW2. So even in combat, you cannot merely fire your weapon at anyone, and oftentimes, you have to receive permission to open fire. If you don’t follow the Rules of Engagement, you can be thrown in military prison for the rest of your life, depending on the outcome of your misdeeds.
• Every time you do fire your weapon, you have to write a multi-page report detailing the who, what, when, where, and why, along with the justification and how that justification aligns with the Rules of Engagement. Then there is a thorough investigation to make sure you didn’t lie about it. If you do, it’s off to prison you go.
• In a shooting range/field exercise/training situation, you have to receive direction from your Sergeant or Commander to check out a weapon from the Armory. The Armory is a room secured by concrete and iron doors with combinations to enter that are solely known by the Armorers who have to take inventory every day and report to the Commander that all weapons are accounted for.
• A soldier has to sign multiple forms to document when and who checked out a specific weapon, the serial number of that weapon, and why it is being checked out.
• Nobody is given ammo until they have arrived at the shooting range or the field exercise, and they will not receive ammo until directed to do so.
• The use of the firearm is watched over by multiple supervisors, and if you mis-use your firearm by, for example, pointing the barrel at another soldier outside of an active war game, you can be court martialed (a military trial) and lose rank, lose pay, receive manual labor, etc.
• At a shooting range, you cannot enter or leave the range without firing into a barrel to ensure there are no unspent rounds in the chamber of your weapon. If there are unspent rounds, you can also be reprimanded, up to being court martialed. (A brief aside, when I was in basic training, a recruit didn’t clear his weapon and fired a live round into the barrel. It was an accident, but that didn’t matter. By the next morning he had been discharged and was on his way to the airport to go home. The rest of us were screamed at for an hour about gun safety, and had our privileges revoked for three days because we hadn’t caught the guy’s error.)
• Before turning in your weapon, you have to disassemble it and clean it thoroughly, something which the Armorer has to approve, sign the weapon back in, and you get patted down to ensure you don’t take any ammo outside of your unit.

In the civilian world, when you buy a weapon, the requirements are:

• A government-issued ID.
• You fill in your personal information, maybe take a voluntary safety course.

Civilians are not supervised or monitored in any way. There are laws to prevent domestic abusers from purchasing firearms, but that’s only if you’ve been convicted and the state has updated the list that bars you from purchasing a weapon. Regardless, once you purchase a firearm there is ZERO oversite.

If military members, who are not only trained to kill, but also highly trained and skilled at using firearms, have to be monitored and restricted in how they use their weapons, why aren’t civilians?