In WW2 my Dad carried a pistol he brought with him when he was drafted. Carried it all the way to England and served in the Army Air Corps.
In Vietnam you could carry your own as well. I know a guy who wasn’t old enough to buy one, so his parents procured a Colt Gold Cup .45 and he carried that in country. I know another guy who was a LERP. Carried a PPK in his pocket. It came in handy one evening when the fight started up close.
Now soldiers returning from the middle east tell me that such is strictly forbidden.
And could you imagine the war in Iraq if if 65% of the guys were running XDs and Judges. It’s bad enough when a military vendor drops something substandard in the supply chain like those Checkmate M9 magazines that malf’d every chance they got. If guys could bring whatever they wanted you’d see some stupid shit with some Tapco accessories.
I question the wisdom of carrying a Gold Cup in Nam. It’s an excellent 1911, just not in Vietnam.
Lots of guys who weren’t issued handguns because they had a Garand liked to get handguns from home or from the enemy because there were times when you could probably get a handgun up and running faster, like when you are sleeping.
We gave those vets a lot of discretion and they generally didn’t abuse it, but there were accidents and incidents from time to time.
Standardization? You mean standardizing on people not carrying pistols? Seems very few enlisted were issued a sidearm in our most recent conflicts outside of super delta rangersoc seals. I have heard it is changing with the M17/M18. It isn’t a matter of carrying an issued gun vs your personal gun.
I own the revolver my great great uncle carried in WWI. An “issued” sidearm wasn’t an option.
I also own the pistol my great uncle carried in WWII. He didn’t take it overseas with him, but he did pick it up off a dead NAZI, and carried it through the rest of the war. He used it in the Battle of the Bulge. An issued sidearm was never offered to him either.
My guess is the reason they are no longer allowed to is something happened once with a negative outcome and changed it for everybody. Or perhaps it’s liability? I know a sniper who was issued a Remington 700 that just didn’t shoot the issued ammo well and he had little confidence in it. He had his reloading kit shipped to him and worked up a better load and used that ammo on duty. He said if he would have been caught doing so, it would have landed him in deep.
But I do recall in Chris Kyle’s book he does mention not liking his issued pistol and carrying personally owned pistols. Perhaps in the more elite units there is more wiggle room.
Uniformity - and standardization. Two main reasons the Army doesn’t let you carry your own weapon. Plus control and safety. The old saying in the Army fits this:
“If you’re doing something, and everyone else is doing something else…you’re wrong”
That being said, for Operation Urgent Fury (Grenada Invasion), the 160th was in a building phase, and they didn’t have enough sidearms to hand out to everyone. Most pilots were being issued some Air Force vintage Smith & Wesson Model 15 revolvers in .38 special. This young 23 year old 1LT was given special dispensation to bring my 1982 manufactured Smith & Wesson Model 66 (4 inch barrel) and I took my own ammo (125 grain hollow point .357) in a government issue shoulder holster. Only time in 22 years I carried my own weapon.
There really isn’t (wiggle room) except for DEVGRU/ST6 and Delta/CAG/whatever they like to be called today. Now they do have choices in so far as modifying the weapon (trigger, sights, etc.). My best friend was a SEAL (now retired), he had asked to carry a Glock and he was shot down (no pun intended) pretty fast. Ironic that they replaced the SIGs with Glocks after he retired.
I think handguns are issued much more widely in the GWOT era than previous conflicts. From I understand from talking to my Dad and Granddad, Vietnam and WW2 vets respectively, the average Joe never saw a handgun. In OIF just about everyone had an M9–part of that was due to vehicle ops and the urban environment where a pistol made sense, and partly because carrying a handgun was a status symbol that resonated with Iraqi’s in the immediate post Saddam years.
In my experience the military is not exactly fond of personal weapons. Military bases have been some of the biggest “gun free zones” in the US. Only after incidents like Ft Hood did the military get anything along the lines of concealed carry on CONUS bases. There’s some good reason for this, and some just risk aversion. But from what I’ve seen, admittedly as an Air Force dude, is that there have been plenty of M9s go go around so there really isn’t a compelling reason to let folks carry their own handguns.
One thing I have seen that makes a lot of sense is that on most deployments, weapons and their associated serial numbers are tied to either an individual or a unit. So if a weapon shows up somewhere it shouldn’t be, it’s fairly easy to track down. Some of our host nations also have very, very strict ideas about firearms, so keeping weapons as strictly military issued helps abide by local policies to keep up diplomacy. In some places even having empty magazines in your gear could get you jacked up by customs–I can’t imagine how they’d react to guys rolling around with personally owned firearms.
Yes, all very true. Also, a large amount of personnel in both Iraq and Afghan never left the wire, so if possible left their rifles and carbines in the armory to make life easier! I knew people that did a whole 7 month tour and never saw their primary weapon till the cleaning before turn in for retrograde!
As said above, main reason is uniformity. The second part of that is common parts. When I had a Glock, spare parts were a pain to get. Same thing with Magazines and ammo. If joe snuffy was carrying a .32 caliber revolver then where the hell will he get ammo? If he runs out in a firefight, he is not going to get any from me.
I knew a SEAL I went to SOCM with and he called me at one time to see if I could get SCAR 308 mags as he only had 4 and they couldn’t ifind more. At one pointI had a Glock 26. I had 2 G26 mags that I bought and the rest of the mags were G19 mags because that is all we had in the inventory.
There is also the reality that very few people actually have hand guns in the MIL (besides SOF). It is mostly officers and a very few enlisted people. Mostly like MPs and Medics and such.
Most MIL, no matter the branch, will never even have a pistol. They are just not many of them. I have a friend that never even saw a pistol when he was in, let alone had to use or qualify with one. Now that he is out he thinks that the M9 is awesome, because he only saw other have them and it was kind of a status symbol… Even though the M9 sucks and those that CAN would have a Glock, or even a Sig for that matter.
^^^This. I was a Marine FAP’d out be a range coach when I was attached to the MEU. We had a good amount of infantry guys who would have their own EOtech’s or Aimpoints on their M4/M16’s and for the range they would have to swap them out for RCO’s (Acogs) or irons. They weren’t allowed to have them on their rifles, for my stage which was 100-500 yard shooting and even on day 4, the “tactical” shooting portion of the range qualification. Knowing full well that they were going down range with their personal sights on their rifles, so we didn’t really train them for what they were actually using.
The fact is that the Military (and I’ve heard this for the Army as well) doesn’t really teach you to shoot for anything more than for the qualification you trying to obtain. They get you to put rounds down range, but actual application is better learned on a unit or MOS basis.
When it comes to a personal firearm the mindset of the branch is, “we can’t control it, and haven’t trained the personnel on it, therefore they shouldn’t have it”, this goes with all things. When I was stationed on Miramar a guy from my unit dumped his sport bike right in front of the base commanders car one evening, over the next week, all personnel had to register their motorcycles with their units and show California motor vehicle training certificates before being able to ride them. Overnight some Marines couldn’t get on base if all they owned was a motorcycle and had to get rides from other people in their units.
Even things like attachments and slings as well. I remember some arms room people straight freaking out because I put on a 2 point sling on my issued M4 that replaced the total crap 3 point. Epic meltdown. Which is why I ended up buying a Larue QD mount for a white light since they refused to issue them at the time. Just took it off after every shift and tossed it in my bag.
However, I can kinda understand the “why” they don’t like having non-issue stuff on carbines and rifles. Not necessarily the Aimpoint/EOTech thing you spoke of, but you know some broke E-2 is going to show up with a whole bunch of Tapco’s and Thermold’s finest for their rifle and wonder WTF to do when the crap breaks.
On base there are other issues, especially pertaining to the dudes in barracks. I mean, every weekend it’s a bacchanal and perpetual game of alcohol-induced one-upsmanship (hey, watch me as I swan dive into a kiddie pool from the third deck). I can see why they’d want to control access to guns.
Well, I will say this. Early on in my career, some of the dorm rooms had more firearms in them than some of the arms storage on base. Then the Clinton gun ban took effect and the powers that be started cracking down on it over time. But I do recall it being the Wild West at one point.
When my cousin deployed in Operation Desert Storm as a 2nd Lieutenant in charge of a couple of Bradley Fighting Vehicles, he took his personally owned Glock 17 with him. I dunno the logistics of it, I dunno the legality of it etc…but he has numerous pictures of him with it shooting in the Desert etc…He did see combat. His Bradleys engaged a T62 and blew the shit out of it with a Tow Missile I believe…
Yeah, I remember a good amount of guys buying the ladder rail panels from ergo or someone else and getting reamed because they didn’t have the knights panels, while at the same time there was an officer who didn’t have a grip pod on his M4, so he purchased his own (tapco or something else) that was budget and we had him take if off the rifle as the thing wobbled so much we weren’t sure how to correct his shooting.
I probably saw 5 Negligent Discharges in my 21 years. Those were all issued weapons that the Army had paperwork and chain of custody with clear lines of who had what, when it was signed out and who is responsible for that weapon.
Now think about that a minute.
Without all of that paperwork and chain of custody what happens when there is a negligent discharge, stolen weapon, or a murder?
You don’t want to know how bad this can go off the rails.
Not everybody in the military is a “Gun Guy” or has both feet on the trail, or is even a “Good Person.”