PA Bill Number: HB2235
Title: Providing for regulation of the meat packing and food processing industry by creating facility health and safety committees in the workplace; ...
Description: Providing for regulation of the meat packing and food processing industry by creating facility health and safety committees in the workplace; ... ...
Last Action: Referred to LABOR AND INDUSTRY
Last Action Date: Apr 25, 2024
Growing number of armed civilians guard military recruiting stations :: 07/24/2015
In the wake of last week's deadly shooting at a military recruiting station in Tennessee, former military personnel and first responders have taken positions armed with semi-automatic rifles and guns to watch over military recruiting stations at a growing number of cities and towns across the country.
From Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Columbus, Ohio to places in Alabama, Texas and Virginia, heavily armed ex-military personnel this week began to take their places outside gun-free military recruiting stations to protect the men and women inside those stations, who by federal law, are prohibited from carry weapons.
In the midstate, on Monday, about four heavily armed men took up posts outside a outside a military recruiting station near Park City Mall in Lancaster, LancasterOnline reported.
Jerry Blakeney stands guard with other members of Operation Hero Guard outside a U.S. military recruiting station in Cleburne, Texas, Tuesday, July 21, 2015. Gun-toting citizens are showing up at military recruiting centers around the country, saying they plan to protect recruiters following last week's killing of four Marines and a sailor in Chattanooga, Tenn. (Rose Baca/The Dallas Morning News via AP) Rose Baca
The Lancaster group of watchmen belongs to Oath Keepers, the news outlet reported. Oath Keepers describes itself as non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders who pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to "defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic."
Calls to the president of the state chapter of Oath Keepers were not immediately returned.
"We swore an oath when we went into the military. And that's for life," U.S. Army veteran Scott Unangst told LancasterOnline. "We're standing guard for our brothers."
The appearance of the civilian guards comes in the wake of last Thursday's shooting spree at a military recruiting station in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The shooting left five service members — four Marines and a sailor — dead.
"This is Americans saying we are tired of our military being left defenseless against threats." - Kim Stolfer
The gunman -- Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, 24, a native of Kuwait who had lived in Tennessee for most of his life -- was shot dead by police.
Kim Stolfer, president of the Pennsylvania Firearms Owners Against Crime, explained that the civilian watchmen are all within their legal rights.
"This is Americans saying we are tired of our military being left defenseless against threats," he said. "It's time for Americans to face the fact we are fighting people who use our freedoms against us. American citizens many of them veterans are tired of watching men and women being killed in uniform."
Stolfer, a former Marine, said it was unconscionable that upper echelon military leaders are considering assigning security guards to watch over military recruiting stations instead of military personnel.
"A lot of places are left defenseless and wide open to people," he said. "If you have no gun sign on the door, I'm pretty sure the bad guy isn't going to follow that."
In the wake of the Tennessee shooting, Gen. Mark Milley, the general officer nominated to be the next Army chief of staff, said the service should "seriously consider" arming recruiters "under certain conditions."
Defense Secretary Ash Carter has also ordered a full review of facility security policies.
In addition, about a half dozen governors have pre-empted the Pentagon's assessment, allowing National Guard personnel to carry weapons on bases and in recruiting stations. Pennsylvania is not among that group.
While the sight of heavily armed men brandishing semi-automatic weapons at a shopping mall may appear dramatic and questionable, Stolfer explained that in Pennsylvania they are within their legal rights.
Pennsylvania gun law allows individuals to transport long firearms (rifles, etc) unloaded to their destination, where they can then load them. In the case of a handgun, however, state law requires gun owners to have a license to carry and transport the handgun, even if it's unloaded.
Stolfer bemoans the fact that Israeli military personnel are permitted to be fully armed in public.
"Here in America, we don't trust the very people who defend our nation," he said. "It irritates me to no end. What you have here is our military members are left defenseless by our policies."
That policy came into being in 1992 when the Department of Defense issued a directive limiting firearms to military personnel who held certain jobs.
In recent years, approximately 10 people have been killed in shootings at military installations.
"We have a problem here that's not being addressed," Stolfer said.
While mall owners have the right to declare their private property gun-free zones, a federal law permitting military personnel from carrying weapons at a recruiting center would override that right.
But already, the armed civilian watchmen have come up against trouble.
In Lancaster, Ohio, on Thursday afternoon, civilian guards who had been guarding a military recruitment center were ordered off a shopping mall property after one of them accidentally discharged his rifle, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
No one was injured. One of the civilian guards was charged with a misdemeanor after he accidentally fired his AR-15 rifle.
The armed civilians had been guarding the center since Monday.
Stolfer said members of the public should not be intimidated by the sight of the armed civilians near the Park City Mall center.
"I would say you are safer there are that moment than you are at parking lot at any other mall," he said.
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2015/07/armed_civilians_guards_militar.html
