Trump calls for arming our armed services

After the horrible massacre in Charlestown SC yesterday, Donald Trump called for the issue of firearms to the stateside military.  As far back as when I was in uniform, service policy was to keep guns off base unless locked securely in the gunroom.  We did not carry firearms, even in South East Asia during the Viet Nam war.  Reason for the policy is accident prevention.  If you have 400,000 troops carrying guns, you are gonna have some accidental discharges, and some people are gonna get themselves shot.  And it only takes one bad accident to create career ending bad press coverage.  So the Pentagon plays it safe and keeps guns out of the hands of the troops as much as possible. 
   Now that we have ISIS crazies gunning for our troops. Think Fort Hood and Charleston.  It is time to stiffen the Pentagon's backbone, and make sure that when on duty, the troops have ready access to firearms.  If not carried in a holster, at least a gun locker on the same floor in the workplace.  Especial at small detachments, like recruiting stations, as well as big installations like the Washington Navy Yard.  If just one soldier had had a gun at Fort Hood, they could have saved a dozen lives.  

Nutcase control

The horrible killing in Charleston SC has brought the gun controllers out in force.   This is misguided, and distasteful.  The gun isn't the problem, the crazy man pulling the trigger is the problem.  I say anyone who kills nine people, worshiping,  inside a church, is crazy.  That's just not human behavior. It may not meet the lawyer's definition of insane, but what do lawyers know, really?
   What should have happened, sometime in the past.  Someone, family, friends, teachers, should have noticed that this young man Dylan Roof was doing and saying strange things.  Some competent psychiatrists should have examined Roof, decided that he was a dangerous nut case, and popped him into a mental hospital.  We used to do things like that, but 1960's activists managed to close mental hospitals all across the country and make it practically impossible to involuntarily commit anyone, no matter how crazy they might be. 
   In our free society,we are reluctant to grant anyone, even proper courts of law, that kind of power over citizens.  The soviets showed us how political opponents could be taken out of action by committing them to mental institutions against their will. 
   I don't believe we can ever have an airtight system but we can do better than we do.  At a minimum we ought to have some empty beds in mental hospitals for those clear cut cases, where everyone, authorities, family, friends, agree that so-and-so is crazy, there is somewhere to put them.  Up here there are no empty beds and the patient winds up handcuffed to a bed in a hospital emergency room, often for several days.