This is the latest statement from Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign on the tragic Fort Hood shooting. He wins my “Dumb-As-A-Doorknob of the Year” award.

Helmke’s statement:

“This latest tragedy, at a heavily fortified army base, ought to convince more Americans to reject the argument that the solution to gun violence is to arm more people with more guns in more places.”

Having spent a combined 20 years of active and reserve service in the Army, I got to see what a “heavily fortified army base” is. I spent a couple of years at Fort Hood, the largest military installation in the free world and a few other installations, both Army and Marine bases, so I know a little bit more than Helmke does on this subject.

Fort Hood is hardly a “heavily fortified army base.” It’s like a small city of 50,000 people. It’s a typical army base with typical soldiers and their families. Military police function as local law enforcement officers for the base and provide services like most any small city, so they are armed. There may be federal law enforcement present, primarily civilians with either military or civilian law enforcement backgrounds that function as most any civilian police department in your home town. They are there to augment the military police, of which most are overseas in Iraq or Afghanistan. They are also armed like any civilian law enforcement officer.

But, that’s where the similarities end between your hometown and Fort Hood. When it comes to firearms ownership, Fort Hood, as do all Army installations in the U.S. resembles Chicago.

The Army practices a very strict form of gun control. Despite their military duties, training, and illusion that a place like Fort Hood is full of 45,000 armed troops, that is not the case. You can own a private firearm, but it must be stored in a designated armory where it is kept under lock and key, and in some instances under 24 hour guard. Firearms cannot be kept in barracks or military housing. If a soldier is caught with a firearm, it’s immediate grounds for a court martial.

Military firearms such as the M4 or M16 are kept locked up in the unit armory. Firearms are issued to soldiers for field exercises, at which point they may be given a blank adapter and blanks to simulate real ammunition being fired. The only time a soldier is in possession of a loaded military firearm is at a range for weapons qualification. It is very closely supervised, brass is collected and personnel are required to relinquish any unfired ammunition. When qualification is complete, the firearms used are returned and accounted for at the unit armory.

A personal experience with my own M16 points out how gun control works in the military. I was in a two-week field exercise at Fort Hood, an annual event that involved the majority of military personnel on the base. Fort Hood, at well over 200,000 acres can handle two complete combat divisions, approximately 30-40,000 personnel in the field at one time. The day before the end of the two week field exercise I was recalled back to my unit for some duties that needed to be fulfilled. A jeep (yes, I’m that old) hauled me, my gear and my M16 back to the unit. It had been a soggy two weeks with rain that was almost continuous. I wasn’t complaining. I was glad to get back to civilization at that point, even if was only one day early.

At some point later in the day, with my M16 at my side the entire time, I realized I needed to turn it into the armory. The armory for my unit was about one mile away. Now, instinctively I knew walking a mile alone on base with an M16 slung on my shoulder was not the brightest thing to do. It would draw the attention of the military police on base if not every officer and non-commissioned officer that passed me by. The result would be a very bad outcome. You see, I was essentially carrying a military weapon with no security for the weapon, other than me. I asked for someone to transport me to the armory in a military vehicle. None were available. They were all in the field. I was told to go on over there anyway and turn my weapon in by the Sergeant on duty. I wasn’t about to walk, so I dumped my M16 into the front seat of my car and headed on over. As I pulled into the parking lot, got out of my vehicle and pulled my M16 out, a relatively low ranking officer approached and bellowed, “What in the hell are you doing with an M16 in your car soldier?” I explained the situation and he came to the conclusion that I probably did the right thing and let me go to turn in the weapon. Needless-to-say, I heard from the sergeant the next day who sent me over to turn in my weapon. He got his butt chewed out. Despite being in the military, carrying an M16 around or throwing it my car is not the recommended method to control weapons in the Army.

For gun control advocates, gun crimes do occur on military installations. A fellow that I went through basic training with a few years earlier was sent from Germany to my unit pending a court martial that was to be held at Fort Hood. He was a witness to a crime in Germany by other soldiers. Apparently, the crime involved several military personnel engaged in a black market scheme of selling stolen military equipment to civilians in Europe. The civilians were most likely not your basic civilians but spies from other countries, most notably the Soviet Union.

Within two weeks of his arrival he was dead, shot in the head in the barracks one night as he slept. It was a hit to keep him from testifying. Organized crime and criminal activities are not the exclusive right of the civilian world. And, despite very strict gun control on base, if a criminal needs to use a gun, they can get one and they will use it. Everyone is armed who wants to be, and those who follow the rules are not. It’s no different than Chicago.

For all practical purposes on a U.S. Army installation, soldiers on any given day are completely unarmed and defenseless. That’s hardly a model of a “heavily fortified army base.” If anything, it’s a model of gun control that leaves our military personnel vulnerable to attack, either internally by nut cases like Hasan, or externally by terrorists hell bent on killing as many people as possible.

Oddly, just outside the gate is the town of Killeen. Civilians are allowed to carry concealed firearms, own firearms and use them for self-defense. But that all ends the moment you enter the gate of Fort Hood.

There is talk that the military may review its gun policies. If it’s anything less than allowing soldiers to defend themselves and their families, don’t bother with it. Don’t insult members of the military by banning privately owned guns that are already under lock and key and held by the military.

Gun control in the military has played an ugly role in making otherwise brave men and women nothing but victims. If the military can trust their men and women in combat, they should trust them 24 hours a day on any military base, over there or here.

Lastly, it only goes to show when the populace is disarmed, the only good that comes from it is tragedy. It’s simply too easy for people like Hasan to shoot with impunity at an unarmed group of military personnel. The ability to defend one’s life is paramount to our existence as human beings. It is ingrained in our DNA. It is instinctive for us as humans to protect our own lives. Yet, our brave soldiers in the U.S. Army are treated as something less than human when it comes to defending their own lives. That needs to change in order to keep nut cases like Hasan in check. Military personnel have the right to self-defense not unlike civilians. It’s insanity to disarm our military while civilians, some with no military training and living adjacent to a military base, are allowed the basic right of self-defense. Does that make sense to anyone? It didn’t make sense when I was in the Army, and considering the world situation, it makes less sense today.

No one stopped Hasan early in his attack because no one other than military law enforcement was armed on Fort Hood. That’s not the way to run an army.