My dad was a USAF officer in the 70s, he’s got a picture of himself with a revolver in a belt slung over his shoulder. He said they would give it to him when he was doing some bullshit detail but they didn’t give him any bullets.
When I was a bright-eyed young airman shortly after 9/11, the actual cops (USAF security forces) had an extremely high ops tempo and were getting burnt out, so they tagged a bunch of us nobodies as security augmentees. I qualified on the M9 (your basic qualification course, maybe a couple hours of in-class training and then you fling 50 rounds downrange trying to hit paper at 25 meters), and very nearly qualified as an “expert marksman.” I then went through a 5 day crash course in policing where we watched videos and practiced frisking and detaining suspects, the basics of vehicle stops, civilian rules of engagement, etc. For the most part I found the training incredibly eye-opening, in that it made me realize how hard it is to do civilian police work. We did exactly 1 “real world” scenario, where my “partner” and I arrived on-scene at a domestic dispute where my fellow role-playing classmates were told to be uncooperative. We basically lost all control, it was horrible.
A few months later I was “activated” during an exercise. I showed up at the armory ass early in the morning, was issued an M16 with 120 rounds of live ammo, and stood at the gate checking IDs. At lunchtime an actual cop pulled up and tossed me the keys to a patrol car so that us augmentees could go get lunch. We went to the chow hall and dutifully stowed our M16s in the racks provided while we ate.
That was the sum of my experience. The exercise ended after a day and I was never activated again.
The takeaway here is that a little bit of training does not go a long way. Real cops train constantly for a hard job, and you can’t replicate that with a 2 week course and an annual 1 day refresher. You may think, “Oh, that guy’s in the military and has had weapons/police training,” but I’m telling you, that’s me, and I’d have no better luck dealing with an active shooter than any other human being.
In fact, one of my co-workers, a dipshitty sort of fellow, went through the exact same training as me and was activated to go guard planes on the flight line. They put you in a little hut with an M16 and check on you every few hours. This dipshitty sort of fellow was the type who owned guns and grew up hunting. He came back early from his augmentee duty because one day he got bored and started ejecting live rounds from his weapon and arranged them in a smiley face on the floor of his little hut.
I think those of us who have served all know this dipshitty sort of fellow, and that’s affecting our perspective. The reality is that, except for a limited number of jobs (MPs and special investigations), the military doesn’t train anyone to carry sidearms around US civilians. Kicking in doors in Afghanistan and surviving firefights with the Taliban doesn’t necessarily prepare you for defending a recruiting center in a strip mall in Boise. Sgt Joe the combat veteran might be OK with a gun, but the Army doesn’t know that. They just know his name, rank, and MOS, and there are going to be LOTS of people with that rank and MOS who have no business being armed. I suppose the DoD could start a vigorous training and qualification program to weed out the well-disciplined from the meat-heads, but that’s going to suck up a lot of time and money to possibly prevent extremely rare tragic events. And at the moment the military is focusing it’s efforts on the big killers, suicides and motorcycles.
But it’s a little different sitting on a ship in a combat zone vs actually getting the Combat Infantryman Badge or even the Combat Action Ribbon. Did you carry a personal weapon? Did you engage in firefight? Did you earn the Combat Action Ribbon?