Michael E. Diamond The Texas school shooting reminds America what vets already know: civilian gun culture is a dysfunctional mess.

Compared to the weapons training that military and law enforcement personnel undergo, the training required of civilian gun owners is a joke.

Most civilians don’t need (as in it being legally required) firearms training to own a weapon.

Not requiring training is something I fundamentally believe in.  To me it is nothing more than a literacy test.  An arbitrary hurdle the goverment can put in your way do deny you a civil right.  You do not need to be a trained and accredited journalist to have a blog or write about the news.  You don’t even need to be a lawyer to represent yourself in court.

Beyond that fundamental belief is the reality that often the goverment officials that “are the only ones professional enough to carry a Glock .40” are the ones who shoot themselves, or bystanders, or put the scopes on their rifles backwards.

But Diamond is going to tell me why I’m wrong.

The U.S. military has a lot of guns, but not a lot of non-combat fatalities. Why is this? Because of common sense military regulations. That’s why, like many other military veterans, I view America’s civilian gun culture as dysfunctional.

A lot of other military veterans think we’re dysfunctional?  Glad to know that you think of the military like Harvard, a special place that endows you with some sort of superiority.  You’re an elitist prick.

Today, Americans mourn yet another tragic mass shooting, this one in a Texas high school. It has been a mere three months since 17 teens lost their lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. Much has been made of U.S. gun control laws — or lack thereof. But instead of listening to politicians battle across the partisan divide, we should be listening to the men and women who work with guns the most.

Absolutely nothing at Parkland or Santa Fe has anything to do with training.

Most Americans would be surprised, for example, at how little time military personnel in particular spend with their weapons over the course of a career. Apart from firing on highly structured firing ranges or routine maintenance, access to your weapon on base is rare. Military Police provide security, so soldiers move about the base unarmed. There’s a reason for this: In the military, anything that reduces accidents, homicides or suicides isn’t put up for a vote. It’s a requirement.

I spent a short time in the National Guard.  I don’t talk about it much because I was never deployed or served anywhere near combat.  I didn’t even complete a full enlistment.  I was injured and out in a couple of years.

One of the things that I learned was that the military is not a democracy.  As a soldier, I am not entitled to the full gamut of civil rights.  They are restricted to what is in the UCMJ.  That is one of the things that separates the military from civilian life.

The military’s strict rules on weapon and ammunition access can apply to wartime as well, as my own experience demonstrates. In 1991, I was a military intelligence officer in the U.S. Army Reserve. My unit was mobilized and sent to Fort Bragg, N.C. Shortly before boarding a plane to Saudi Arabia I was issued my M16 along with several magazines of live ammunition.

Although I had fired countless live rounds over the years on various military weapons ranges, it’s a different feeling when you’re issued live ammunition before heading to a combat zone. This time it was real.

After a 16-hour trip — most of which I spent sitting on the hood of a truck with my back against the windshield trying to stay warm — we emerged into the intense desert heat. Because of the ear-splitting noise of departing jets we quickly inserted hearing protection, and then surrendered our ammunition.

That’s right. Once we arrived in an operational war zone, one of the first things the U.S. Army did was take our ammunition away.

That’s because Saudi Arabia was not a war zone.  It is a friendly country.  I’m sure they gave you ammo back when you actually got into Iraq.  Don’t bullshit me.

We were in a location where small-arms engagement with enemy forces was unlikely, so, as far as the Army was concerned, there was no need for a bunch of wound-up soldiers to be walking around with live rounds. Even without any ammunition, before entering a building every soldier had to demonstrate his or her weapon was empty by pointing it down toward a barrel of sand and pulling the trigger, causing it to make the “click” sound of an empty weapon (hopefully).

Hopefully, after all that training you’d know how to safely clear a weapon.

And yes, they didn’t let you have ammo because if you shot a Saudi while in a staging area you would create an international incident.  The nation’s foreign policy rests on you not being an idiot with the rifle the Army gave you.

Eventually, my unit moved north toward Kuwait, where we were re-issued ammunition just before the start of the ground war. Several weeks later, after successfully completing our mission in Kuwait City, we were re-routed to northern Iraq to address the Kurdish refugee crisis. On arrival, we once again surrendered our ammunition.

What did I just say about ammo in a war zone?

These military safety requirements are a stark contrast to civilian U.S. gun laws. Where the military requires background checks before a service member is allowed anywhere near a live weapon, the majority of U.S. states allow private gun sales without a background check.

Which is a minority of gun sales.  Don’t bullshit me into believing that all the guns used in crimes come from gunshow personal transfers.  We know that is not the case.  Also, universal background checks is unenforceable.  So other than turning people who want to be law abiding into criminals, what’s the point?

Where military personnel are trained to take a weapon away from a soldier who poses an extreme risk to himself or others, most states do not have laws enabling law enforcement or loved ones to do the same.

While I agree with the idea of a temporary restraining order, again that whole “you don’t have civil rights in the military” thing means that the military can take its gun away from you (it’s not your gun, it’s the Army gun they lent to you).  In the civilian world, it’s my gun, I bought with my money, and I am entitled to due process.

Compared to the weapons training that military and law enforcement personnel undergo, the training required of civilian gun owners is a joke — if it exists at all.

Fuck you.

Before I was sent out to use it, I had to prove an intimate familiarity with my weapon — how it worked, its maximum effective range in meters, how to load and unload it safely, how to disassemble and reassemble it, how to clean it, clear jams, sight it and fire it accurately. So it’s hard for me to fathom how easy it is for almost any civilian to walk out of a gun retailer carrying a new weapon without a clue about so many of these standards.

Nothing like an appeal to bureaucracy.  Why is your training any better than what fathers have been teaching sons, and now sons and daughters, for generations?  My dad taught me.  I’ve never killed anyone or had an accident.

Repeat after me: the bureaucrat way isn’t the best way.

And where military and law enforcement undergo extensive training on how to make the right shooting decision quickly while under extreme stress, civilians receive no such training, contributing to avoidable deaths arising from poor decisions and petty disputes. In this context, the National Rifle Association’s favorite slogan about good guys with guns defeating bad guys with guns is more naive myth than solution.

Really?  If that is the case why does Black Lives Matter exist and why are there protests?

I just can’t handle the cognitive dissonance of “the police can carry guns because they get training on how to use them” and “the police are racist murderers who kill POC without reason” that comes from the Left.

Also, where are the rivers of blood that CCW is supposed to cause every time it is implemented?  I read about very few bad CCW shoots.

The fact is drilling ROE into military in a combat zone has nothing do to with shooting someone who broke into your house at night.  This is a bullshit equivalence.

It’s crucial that veterans now bring our voice and experience to the national conversation about reasonable gun reform. As a group, we understand guns and appreciate that responsible gun ownership is an important part of American life — but we also understand that a safe environment is achieved through training and regulation.

No it’s not.  Take away the gang crime and for 400 million guns, we have very few gun deaths.  Your training and regulation will do fuck all for law abiding gun owners who want to own guns legally.  The criminals won’t care.

We fought to protect our country, yet see our fellow citizens being gunned down in schools, churches, restaurants and concert venues at a rate unseen anywhere else in the developed world. More Americans have been killed by guns since 1968 than in all of the wars in U.S. history. It’s ridiculous and tragic.

You swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.  It seems you really don’t want to do that or understand what that is all about.  There are things we can do to reduce mass shootings and gun crime.

Taking guns an ammo away from people – remember, you cannot be armed on a military base in the US unless it is part of your duties and then it is very limited – is not the answer.

As a veteran, I am often asked what lessons the civilian world can learn from the military. There are many insights each can gain from the other. When it comes to guns, however, the greater wisdom lies with the military. It maintains a high-functioning gun environment because it remains serious about background checks, training and accountability.

It is time for the civilian world to do the same.

None of that will make a difference.  The majority of non suicide gun deaths come from a small minority of criminals.  This is just more restriction of civil rights to law abiding people.

All I’ve learned here is that he thinks of law abiding gun owners as irresponsible, dysfunctional people.  This is elitist contempt, nothing more.

This takes military service and turns it into a title of nobility.  He’s better than the rest of us because he got to carry an empty weapon in Saudi Arabia.

I don’t know where the media keeps finding these veterans but they need to stop.  Nothing will ruin the reputation of the military faster than “I served so I an take away your rights.”

Or maybe that is the point.  To highlight these pricks until Conservatives turn on the military as a group of elitists.  Or maybe that’s just me being cynical.

I for one am glad I live in a free society with civil rights that are not dependent on me being part of a junta.