Hegseth: Troops Can Carry Personal Weapons on Bases

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said this week that he will allow service members to carry personal weapons onto military installations, citing the Second Amendment and recent shootings at bases across the country. In a video posted to X on Thursday, Hegseth said he was signing a memo directing base commanders to grant requests for troops to carry privately owned firearms "with the presumption that it is necessary for personal protection." He said any denial of a service member's request must be explained in detail and in writing, the AP reports. Defense Department policy has prohibited military personnel from carrying personal weapons on base without permission from a senior commander.

"Effectively, our bases across the country were gun-free zones," Hegseth said. "Unless you're training or unless you are a military policeman, you couldn't carry, you couldn't bring your own firearm for your own personal protection onto post." Questions about why service members lacked access to weapons have emerged following shootings on military bases. Such shootings have included isolated events between service members as well as mass casualty events, such as the shootings by an Army psychiatrist at Texas' Fort Hood in 2009 that left 13 people dead. Hegseth cited some of the events, including a shooting that injured five soldiers at Fort Stewart in Georgia last year. Officials said the shooter, an Army sergeant who worked at the base, used his personal handgun before he was tackled by fellow soldiers and arrested.

Bases have a strict protocol for storing personal firearms. Typically, military personnel must officially check their guns out of secure storage to go to on-base hunting areas or shooting ranges, then check them back in promptly after the sanctioned use. Military police are often the only armed personnel on base, outside of shooting ranges, hunting areas or in training, where soldiers can wield their service weapons without ammunition. Tanya Schardt, of the Brady gun violence prevention organization, said Defense officials and military brass have opposed relaxing the current policy, enacted under George HW Bush. Schardt noted that most active-duty service members who die by suicide do so with a weapon they own personally and argued that there will "undoubtedly be an increase in gun suicide and other gun violence." In a statement, Schardt added: "Our military installations are among the most guarded, protected properties in the world, and they've never been 'gun-free zones.' If there is a problem with violent crime on these installations, then the Secretary of Defense has an obligation to alert the American people and describe how he's working to prevent that crime."