That Randy’s first published writings on the topic of unarmed American soldiers including combat veterans being slaughtered on their American homeland base by a single handgun-armed attacker and having to wait ten minutes for civilian police officers with no combat experience to save them did not show any anger at our troops being treated as if they were unworthy to defend themselves made me feel abandoned and angry.

If Randy Herrst wanted to argue the pressing need for a new security policy on military bases, why didn’t he even address the issue of the unarmed soldiers at the point of attack? If anything, the murder of disarmed American combat veterans on base should have angered Randy even more than it angered me.

But at least from what he published in the five days following the Fort Hood shootings before I wrote and published my column, Randy was silent on this issue. And that silence was unacceptable.

Randy challenges me, “If the military is going to allow soldiers on base to be armed, the following parameters ABSOLUTLEY MUST be decided: Who, What Conditions, When, Where. If you refuse to address that question, there is ZERO chance of ever implementing self-defense carry on miliatry bases. ZERO.”

No, sir. You’re the expert. You write it. If you have no other outlet I’ll publish it right here as a bylined Guest Column.

My previous discussions of self-defense principles with you were almost entirely in the context of civilian self-defense, so my analysis of reactions dealt with the way a lone civilian would be likely to confront criminals, not the way military units would face terrorists. There is a small amount of overlap, but the differences are much greater than the similarities.

I reiterate that every military unit should ALWAYS be in Condition Yellow, 24/7, and they can afford to do that because they always have lots of trained soldiers at their disposal….unlike the typical civilian or civilian police force. The problems are somewhat different, as are the solutions.

Ask any military unit in hostile territory, and they will tell you that they are ALWAYS ready for overwhelming immediate response if they are attacked, so there is never more than a few seconds of surprise in the enemy’s favor. My point regarding Ft. Hood was that they have a duty to be on a similar level of alert, even though they are on U.S. soil, becuase the enemy has been bringing the war to us since 1993.

To this point, no one who is criticizing me has been willing to address the single most important question: If the military is going to allow soldiers on base to be armed, the following parameters ABSOLUTLEY MUST be decided: Who, What Conditions, When, Where.

If you refuse to address that question, there is ZERO chance of ever implementing self-defense carry on miliatry bases. ZERO.

There is not the slightest possibility that the military will allow armed off-duty soldiers to enter WMD bunkers, base armories, ready-alert sites, or C3I facilities. There are a number of other places where armed on or off-duty soldiers will not be welcome. Work on that and there might be some hope.

As for my lauded techniques and GCIVC, note that my approach has always been fact based in order to expose the lies of the other side, so I am not guilty of abandoning my principles. I know enough about the military to know that the military is ultimately about maintaining the security of the country, and not primarily about self-defense for its soldiers. So if you want to ever achieve a wider range of rights for the soldiers, you must educate the military about the facts, and you must educate yourself about the military imperatives. The military is neither a democracy or a republic, but a duty-based organization wherein the soldiers voluntarily accept some restrictions on their rights for the length of their contract.