I couldn't disagree with that more. I think if they are on duty, in uniform, they need to be able to carry. Unfortunately they live in a nation where they are a target. Listing lower level enlisted as a no and NCOs as a yes is outrageous to me. How is it different from a police officer straight out of the academy? These folks deserve the right to protect themselves. You of all people know this. Many of us have served and I find it hard to believe many would agree with your sentiments. I do appreciate that you put it out there tho. I'm by no means trying to bash you. Just totally disagree.
It is very different from a police officer straight out of the academy. First most departments require someone to be 21 once they graduate, while most lower enlisted are 18-21, which is below the legal age to purchase a pistol in the first place. Second a police officer goes through months of training for pistol use and the types of situations that requires their use. Military does not get this same type of training, other than Military Police (who do carry).
So that means we need to take away time in their entry training (Basic Training/Boot Camp) to give them pistol instruction for self defense, instead of combat training for war like we're supposed to, which then means they are less prepared for their intended use. We would also need to take out training when they're at their duty station in order to maintain their abilities with a pistol. Not training guys up and not having them carry can unfortunately cost us a few lives when cowards carry out attacks like this. Not having them at their peak ability during combat can lead to a lot more lives lost.
Shooting skills diminish very quickly, which is why you see Infantry and other MOS's that use their weapons more, go to the range much more frequently than a non-combat MOS. They're not expected to use their weapons as much, so while they need to qualify once a year to make sure they can still shoot, they're don't need to go to the range or practice combat skills constantly to maintain peak ability.
So we're either going to have a bunch of guys who aren't shooting very often carrying pistols, which are typically the hardest weapon platform to shoot accurately, or we're going to be spending a lot of money to keep them trained up. If we're expecting these guys to do it on their own time, then we need to take away time from their unit to go and go to those classes and ranges privately.
I didn't do a lot of pistol shooting in the Army, and I was issued a pistol. Typically tankers and MP's do the most pistol shooting because those are considered their primary weapons. We essentially did familiarization and then every so often we did pistol drills. Plus an M9 isn't a good pistol to conceal carry if we're going that route.
I can understand giving a Recruiting station Commode an M9 and a magazine or two, but it would be a lot of paperwork to do so (bending rules about taking a weapon in a private vehicle) and wouldn't be very secure if we left them in the offices, even locked up (military arms rooms are damn near impossible to get into by comparison)
Letting military in general carry would also require a lot of rewriting of the rules. Currently no weapons are allowed in the barracks (for good reason) which would need to change for these guys carrying, or we have to spend billions to get M9's for everyone in every unit.
So if some SNCO's or officers wanted to carry, it would limit it, and I could understand that, but everyone? I don't see it. I'm sure plenty of people would disagree with me, but that's not thinking logically. In pure economics, we're going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to implement that. The military is more likely to just make everyone wear full PPE than arm everyone.
*Edit* Military units also have set budgets, so if we're spending money to get them all weapons/training/ammo and not increasing our defense budget, then units will need to eliminate various training to afford pistols/ammo.
