Armed guard armed?

[Alpo]

Leave us say that we have a US Navy ship. And at the foot of the gang plank going down to the pier there is a guard. Holding a rifle. He is not to let anyone aboard.

 

Would he actually have ammunition for the rifle? Or would the rifle just be a symbol of him being an armed guard?

 

New TV show. NCIS Sydney. At the end of the show we have the two agents and the two Australian cops show up at the submarine. Which has an armed guard. The sub has been evacuated because the reactor is leaking. There are nuclear testing people aboard. Except they're not, they are Russians spies stealing American nuclear secrets.

 

The four people bluff their way past the guard, and are headed up the plank when the Russian spies come down the plank. The Russians pull guns and the four good guys turn and run. The guard gets shot and is lying, probably didDEAD, on the dock.

 

All four of the good guys jump over the guard, who is holding an m4. And they run off into the confusion of the pier being followed by the Russian spies.

 

Only two of the good guys are armed. The Aussie cops. The NCIS agents are not authorized to carry a gun in Oz.

 

And it just seemed to me an intelligent thing to do would be to grab that rifle on the way by. I was unarmed. Now I have an assault rifle. This is better.

 

Unless the NCIS agents were aware that the armed guard was not really armed since he had no ammo.

 

I know they used to do that.

 

But after the assault on the Marine base in Beirut in October of 1983, I would think that they issue ammunition to the guards.

Edited October 25 by Alpo

[watab kid]

my question is are you armed just because you are holding a rifle/pistol/revolver  ? o say no , unless its loaded its just a club or a shopping bag as far as im concerned , im all for not just the mag inserted but locked and loaded to be armed ., i generally am , 

[Crooked River Pete, SASS 43485]

My son ( post USS Cole) claimed the guards on his sub had live ammo.

[Alpo]

In a pouch on his web gear, or in the gun?

[PaleWolf Brunelle, #2495L]

Why don't you try contacting the writer of that particular episode to ask him why the agents didn't snag the guard's weapon??  
 

Morgan O'Neill

 

[Sgt. C.J. Sabre, SASS #46770]

2 hours ago, PaleWolf Brunelle, #2495L said:

Why don't you try contacting the writer of that particular episode to ask him why the agents didn't snag the guard's weapon??  
 

Morgan O'Neill

Because then he just might get an answer and deprive us the fun of discussing it.

[Alpo]

I don't care why they did what they did on the television show. They did it because that's the way it said to do it in the script.

 

My question, on this one and on all the others I've asked about, is IF IT WAS REAL, would they have done that?

 

If this was real, would the guard at the submarine have a loaded rifle? Or would it be an unloaded rifle that he's carrying as a symbol of his authority as a guard?

 

The last three or four years that Gibbs was on NCIS, he quit carrying his issue SIG and was now carrying a personally owned 1911.

 

And about half the time that he has that gun out and it looks like he might need to shoot it, the hammer is down. Why is the hammer down? Probably one of two reasons. Either the moron that wrote the script said that the hammer was down. Or the moron that was directing the same scene did not yell, "Hey Mark, cock the damn hammer!" That's why they did it on the show. Watching that I might wonder if, in real life, somebody is stupid enough to run around pointing a 1911 at people with the hammer down.

 

So, as I said, my questions are not why they did it the way they did it on the TV show. My questions have always been, IF IT WAS REAL, would they do it that way?

Edited October 25 by Alpo

[Eyesa Horg]

Like in Westerns, good guy points rifle at bad guy. Bad guy isn't giving up so good guy now racks in a round. Why the hell is he pointing a rifle, at a bad guy, that has the hammer down on an empty chamber?

[Sgt. C.J. Sabre, SASS #46770]

1 hour ago, Eyesa Horg said:

Like in Westerns, good guy points rifle at bad guy. Bad guy isn't giving up so good guy now racks in a round. Why the hell is he pointing a rifle, at a bad guy, that has the hammer down on an empty chamber?

Or, often as not, to prove that he is SERIOUS, whoever has the pistol racks the slide so that NOW he has a round in the chamber.

[Cactus Jack Calder]

Late 60’s, US Naval Station, Norfolk, VA. Marine Guards on the base gates carry a pistol on one hip and magazines on the other.  Apparently this was policy. 

How I found out! One of my shipmates ran the gate into the base in his Chrysler SuperBee, extremely drunk. The Marines had to load the magazine and rack the slide before they could have shot at him. This was witnessed by other men from my ship. By that time he was around a corner and it would have been irresponsible to shoot. They recognized the car and knew who he was, past experience.
 

Boy did he get in trouble for that stunt. Didn’t see him for quite a while. I was surprised they eventually sent him back to the ship. 
 

CJ

[Sgt. C.J. Sabre, SASS #46770]

46 minutes ago, Cactus Jack Calder said:

Late 60’s, US Naval Station, Norfolk, VA. Marine Guards on the base gates carry a pistol on one hip and magazines on the other.  Apparently this was policy. 

CJ

When I was in it still was, (80s). But my experience was at our bases. I don't know how it it when one of our ships is docked at a foreign port. And it also probably depends on the ship, (Cruiser, Destroyer, Nuclear Aircraft Carrier, etc).

Edited October 26 by Sgt. C.J. Sabre, SASS #46770

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

About September, 1962, Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, remote gate, about 1900 hours,  (The nearest place with anyone else alive was three miles down the road), two gate guards armed with S&W Model 10 revolvers, each guard with 6 rounds in a leather cartridge slide and no ammo in the pistols.

 

Three of us college guys showed up to pick up one guy's personal belongings (he was an AF brat home to go to college while his Sergeant Major dad completed a tour in Greece) which got sent to Mountain Home instead of Hill AFB in Layton, Utah.  While we waited for someone to come escort us on base I asked one guard what kind of piece he was carrying.  He didn't know, but said it was written on the gun somewhere and handed me his weapon.  " Maybe you can find it."

 

I did, showed him where it was and gave his weapon back to him.  The other guy was still on the phone with his back to us.

 

Hill Field got tougher, because I was home on leave in 1968 before I went to 'Nam and picked up "transient pay" at the base paymaster's office  (My wife's home was a couple of miles from the south gate.)  

 

I wore Class A uniform with my shiny Captain's bars and what ribbons I had, was given a one day escorted pass at the guard shack with three armed (1911s with magazines in the well and two more magazines on their belts.) AF dudes and was picked up at the gate, driven to a parking lot by two armed men, and walked to the office, then driven back.  They gave my wife a pass so she could use the facilities while I was gone, but I didn't get one and I still had a Secret Clearance.  She didn't have a Secret Clearance, but had a Confidential one because of her work at the hospital on Okinawa.

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

summer ‘67, Neu Űlm, Germany, we were at less than half strength so I’d get Sergeant of the Guard duty every week and a half or more. I had the usual three reliefs of four guard posts. Motor pool, ammo dump, mess hall outside and mess hall basement. Only the basement guy was armed and that was a full magazine of 20 7.62. That guard post was about 6’x12’ between two steel doors, one that he could open from the inside and the other secured with two locks, he was not supposed to know both combinations, was not required to know any.

 

Beyond the locked door were work spaces, another locked door with two more locks and 18 nukes.

outside that secure guard post in the basement of the mess hall was the store of c-rations which in the silent night hours with no one else around would sometimes come up missing a desert or two or perhaps cigarettes.

oh, adding…..

 

one time when I was sergeant of the guard, I actually had a prisoner to worry about. Pfc Kennedy had gone AWOL and after thirty days it became desertion. He was a cook, big guy, had previously gotten busted for the heinous crime of taking a bottle of ketchup home from the mess hall.  The MPs found him in Stuttgart and instead of holding him in their lockup brought him to me to hold him until the MPs from the stockade could come for him the next day.

my instructions were to give him a bunk near the corporal of the guard and take away his boots, he wouldn’t run far barefoot. Accompany him to the john, keep my 45 loaded. For meals take a guard with me and give the guard a loaded mag from the safe, and we go to the mess hall together, give him back his boots for that, if he runs shoot him.

Edited October 27 by Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984

[Trailrider #896]

It was the dark of the moon, and I don't recall the date, but about 0215 I was out on a Minuteman I targeting team. We were about five miles down the road from the only bar in about 100 miles. There were four of us, me, two EM's and a site security guard. The guard was the only one armed...with an M-2 Carbine with one fifteen round magazine, which only had 10 rounds issued. My two team members were "down in the hole". A vehicle pulls up to the gate, with the headlights fully in our faces, so you couldn't see who was behind them! Guard walks slowly up to the gate, as we were not expecting anyone.  I edged over to the ditch (about 2 feet deep was all) on the side of the drive, hoping if "they" shot him, I might be able to cross over and grab his weapon (like a dumb 2LT). Fortunately, it was a couple of guys having just come from the bar, and feeling good. They even offered us a beer, which, we politely declined and they backed up and drove away!  Don't know if the guard had a round chambered or not.  Fools rush in...  

[Dapper Dave]

My experience was a wee bit different, but perhaps because I was aboard an ammunition ship. Our loadout is still classified, even though the ship was turned into high quality razor blades 12 years ago, but we took shipboard security seriously - we also had NO Marines on board. Gunners' Mates took care of shipboard security. The Officer of the Deck and the Petty Officer of the Watch on the Quarterdeck were armed with 1911s. Pistols were carried with a full mag inserted and chamber empty, in normal peacetime situations. No rifles were present. If we had a situation, such as the "no nuke" protesters who tried to climb the brow, a Mossberg or Remington 870 shotgun might be issued. It was AMAZING to see how fast the protesters turned around once they heard a shotgun rack. That is the ONLY time I have ever seen that old wives' tale actually work. 
Rifles issued at the time were M14s, not M4s, even though we did cover the M16 in Gunner's Mate "A" School, (note, M16A2, this was WAY before the M4 series), because the 5.56mm cartridge did not have enough oomph to throw a line. 

So, keeping in mind this was almost 40 years ago, YES, that person at the brow would have had a loaded rifle, but quite possibly with empty chamber to lessen the chance of accidents. Sailors generally are NOT well trained in small arms, and I say that with personal experience.

Edited October 27 by Dapper Dave

[Trailrider #896]

Speaking of the sound of a shotgun being racked: The late, great Bill Jordan was patrolling alone in a squadcar, in El Paso, at night, when he spotted a known drug dealer. The dealer spotted the car and took off running, heading to the entrance to an alley. Jordan jumped out of the car, and despite being the ultimate pistol shot, grabbed a '97. As the perp ducked into the alley, Jordan didn't follow, knowing that because of the streetlight behind him, he'd be backlit.  So he racked the slide on the shotgun, and the perp came to a screeching halt and threw both hands straight up in the air!

 

There are many sounds in this wonderful world; there's the sound of a baby calling for its mother. But there's no sound to give one pause...like the sound of a shotgun being wracked in the darkness!