After shootings, armed citizens guard recruiters

Two states, Michigan and Kentucky, have authorized their guardsmen to carry personal weapons for protection, said Major Edward Shank, public affairs officer for the Pennsylvania National Guard and its 20,000 members. Reports of these self-appointed sentinels-some of them from private militia-have filtered in from Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Tennessee, Alabama, New Hampshire, and Virginia, the AP and the Trace report.

Those with 3 Percent Idaho said they would stay guarding armed forces recruiting centers until Friday and they encouraged others to come and join the conversation about constitutional rights.

Among other steps is sending U.S. Department of Safety and Homeland Security mobile units used for drivers’ licenses to armories to accelerate the issuance of handgun-carry permits.

Wolf spokesman Jeff Sheridan said the governor shares the lawmakers’ concerns about the safety of the military members and recruiters in light of the violent acts that played out in Chattanooga last week. A gunman, who died in the deadly July 16 assault in a shootout with police, attacked a recruiting center and a Navy and Marine Corps reserve center, authorities have said.

The U.S. Army has warned personnel at recruitment centers to regard all armed civilians as a potential security threat.

“They’re sitting ducks”, Rhodes told the Associated Press on Tuesday. “We support governors’ and Adjutants’ General efforts to review and strengthen the the security of their personnel”, Webster said in an email. Many were already guarding centers in Tennessee, Arkansas and Oklahoma, president Stewart Rhodes said.

Armed with rifles, Roy Cooper and several others took their posts outside the Armed Forces Recruiting Center on Louise Avenue at 8 a.m. Wednesday and stayed until the last employee left for the day after 6 p.m.

They most likely walked into a recruiting office found inside a neighborhood strip mall.

These civilian guard movements began in part to protest the military’s policy of forbidding service members from carrying weapons on bases and in recruiting centers.

“I’m sure the citizens mean well, but we cannot assume this in every case and we do not want to advocate this behavior”, according to the Army Command Operations Center-Security Division letter.

“There’s no way with the population that we have in the united states that we can seek out everybody”, he said.

There’s no evidence that such centres are in danger.

Numerous guard members see their stand as a simple way to show support for the military.

Be Civil – It’s OK to have a difference in opinion but there’s no need to be a jerk.