The George H.W. Bush-era ban on personal carry for service members is gone. Hegseth signed the memo this week, and it flips the default from "no, unless justified" to "yes, unless documented otherwise."

"Effectively, our bases across the country were gun-free zones. 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."

That's a pretty stark way to describe a policy that's been sitting there for thirty years. Active duty guys I've talked to at the range over the years found it genuinely bizarre — carry legally off-post, then lock it up the moment you cross the gate.

The Brady org's counter that bases were never "truly" gun-free zones is technically fair — MPs are armed, armories exist — but that's a thin distinction when you're a non-MP servicemember and your personal carry piece is sitting in a storage locker. The suicide concern they raised is legitimate and shouldn't be waved off, but it's also a separate policy conversation from the carry access question itself.

The real variable here is what happens at the commander level. A presumption of approval with a paper trail requirement sounds clean on paper, but "how consistently that paperwork requirement gets enforced across 750-plus installations" is exactly the right thing to watch. One base could run this like a shall-issue system, the next one makes the documentation process painful enough that nobody bothers to ask.

Any veterans here who carried personally off-post during their service — did the gate-to-storage requirement ever actually affect how you thought about your daily carry setup, or did you just leave the gun at home?

Read the full article in The Handbook → | By Steve Duskett