Hegseth Ends Base Carry Ban

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ended the decades-old prohibition on service members carrying personal firearms on military bases.

Driving the news: Hegseth signed a memo this week directing base commanders to approve troop requests to carry privately owned firearms with a default presumption of approval for personal protection. Any denial must be documented in writing with a detailed explanation.

Catch up quick:

• The original ban dates to the George H.W. Bush administration
• Under the old policy, personal firearms had to stay in secure storage — checked out only for ranges or on-base hunting, then immediately returned
• Military police were effectively the only armed personnel on base outside of sanctioned training

The big picture: This isn't a small procedural tweak. For 30-plus years, the only people carrying on a U.S. military installation were MPs and troops in training. That's now flipped — the presumption runs toward carry, not against it.

What they're saying:

"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." — Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense

The Brady organization pushed back hard, with representative Tanya Schardt arguing that military installations are already among the most secured properties in the country and were never truly "gun-free zones" in any meaningful sense. She warned the change could drive up gun suicides among active-duty troops — a concern worth taking seriously given that suicide is the leading cause of gun death in uniform.

Yes, but: The commanders still hold veto power. Hegseth's memo creates a presumption of approval, not a mandate. A base commander who wants to restrict carry can still do so — they just have to put it in writing. How consistently that paperwork requirement gets enforced across 750-plus installations is an open question.

The bottom line: Troops who carry off-post for self-defense can now do the same on-post. Whether that meaningfully changes day-to-day safety — or creates new risks — will depend almost entirely on how individual commanders implement it.