The Army is taking steps to require soldiers at Ft. Campbell in Kentucky to disclose all of their privately owned weapons along with any civilian gun licenses.
Military officials insist the policy is not connected to a recent controversial Department of Homeland Security report that warned disgruntled veterans could pose a national security threat. Rather, the inventory of private guns is aimed at stemming what the Army claims is an increasing number of accidental discharges by gun-toting soldiers.
“As a response to a number of negligent discharges of privately owned weapons, the command decided to explore how to implement a training program for soldiers with privately owned weapons,” Cathy Brown Gramling, Ft. Campbell’s director of media relations, tells Newsmax. “Their goal is to identify soldiers with firearms and provide additional safety training to them, much like our motorcycle and driver safety classes.”
Several Army spokespersons said the DHS report warning that soldiers returning from combat might be recruited by radical terrorist organizations had nothing to do with the move to make troops register privately owned weapons stored off base. That DHS report warned police and security agencies, including the Army that: “Rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat.”
The volatile report went on to say that police agencies should expect an increase in gun-related violence because: “Heightened interest in legislation for tighter firearms … may be invigorating rightwing extremist activity, specifically the white supremacist and militia movements.”
“There is no linkage,” Lt. Col. Les Melnyk, a defense department spokesman tells Newsmax. “While the DOD got a copy [of the DHS report] there was no policy change, certainly not in the couple of weeks since the report came out.”
Fort Campbell is home to a combat brigade that is currently in action in Iraq. Many of its soldiers have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army says.
Late last week, a soldier stationed at Ft. Campbell e-mailed Newsmax to report that his company commander issued an order on March 11 for all soldiers in his command to register their privately owned firearms and disclose concealed weapons permits. The order was mandatory post-wide, the soldier said. Six days later, base commander Brig. Gen. Steve Townsend learned of the unlawful order and immediately rescinded it, Gramling says.
Townsend then authorized a “policy study” on the matter that still includes identifying soldiers who keep guns off base or who possess concealed weapons permits.
Lt. Col. Nathan Banks, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, says “kudos should be handed out to the general [at Ft. Campbell]” despite the apparent infringement on Constitutional safeguards.
“We are hearing about a lot of incidents of accidental discharges, not necessarily there but around the country and we are trying to do something about it,” Banks says. Soldiers who live in Army-supplied base housing and in barracks are already required to keep their privately owned weapons in secure military arms rooms, Banks adds.
However, Capt. Chris Miller, a 12-year veteran of the Christian County Sheriff’s Department, the jurisdiction that surrounds most of Ft. Campbell, tells Newsmax he’s unaware of any increase in accidental-discharge incidents. “Right off the top of my head I don’t think we’ve had any – maybe one – in the 12 years I have been in the department,” Miller says.
“At this time, I do not have information regarding the specific numbers of negligent discharges, just that it had come to the attention of the senior commanders and they were concerned about soldier safety,” Gramling responded.
A National Rifle Association spokesman in Washington said the entire Army effort to count private guns is an infringement on the soldiers’ Second Amendment rights. The Army’s attitude toward private gun ownership has always been ambivalent and, as a result, the NRA has been monitoring the Army’s attitude toward private gun ownership for years, according to Alexa Smith, spokesperson for the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action.
“The military has broad powers over its personnel. We have received [adverse] reports at several bases over a period of years. We are investigating through appropriate channels,” Smith says.
The soldier who revealed the Army’s directive says he did it because he was suspicious of his commanding officer’s motives.
“It just seems a little coincidental to me that within 90 days of the most anti-firearm president in history being inaugurated… the Army comes around wanting what amounts to full registration of all firearms, even if they are off post, and doesn’t offer any reason or purpose as to why. I fear something nasty blowing in the wind here.”
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