TexasCHLforum.com

bburgi wrote: ...We also answer to the President as U.S. Soldiers, but he must first request our use from the Governor. ...

Brian

The Prez may "ask" the Governor for courtesy's sake, but he is not required to do so. Congress removed the requirement in 1986, and a Supreme Court case affirmed it. See my earlier post (20 Oct) in this thread for Perpich vs Dept of Defense. When push comes to shove, you belong to the feds.

I would like to see what policy your NG unit has. I am curious as to how it justifies disarming non-guard member CHL'ers. A commander can pretty much order his troops to do or not do anything that is not forbidden by law, but given that Mabry is state property, I wonder what the NG hangs its hat on for forbidding CHL carry. If in fact it does.

thx

I think srothstein cleverly solved the puzzle of whether it is state or federal owned. That would not necessarily prevent the feds from trying to enforce federal rules anywhere federal dollars are spent. Interesting question -- CHL on National Guard properties, and do the rules change when feds are involved with money or active duty time?

However I have other homework to do now. sigh.

srothstein wrote: Camp Mabry is the Headquarters base for the National Guard in Texas. I have always been told that it is a state owned facility ...So, I still think it is state owned and they could not legally make you unload the weapon that way. But I cannot prove that for you.

It may very well be that legally the ground is state property, and it would not surprise me -- would be one way for the DoD to not have to worry about yet another piece of property. I had never really thought about it before -- it's just that considering the Guard is set up to be a federal reserve force that started me wondering about it.

marksiwel wrote: Well if the National Guard is a Federal Entity, then I guess that takes the wind out of the sales of "Militias mean State National Guard" crowd.

Yes it does. I figured this out in college, when I studied the structure and history of the armed forces in ROTC. The colonial militias were more or less built from the ground up, with militia members responsible for providing their own arms. There were programs to help those too poor to buy their own, and colonial governments often paid for powder and bullets, and heavy weaponry like cannons, but it was essentially a local defense force. The National Guard was established and organized by Congress and it has always been seen as a state-by-state reserve of the national active duty military. There are two components to the reserves of the US: The Reserves and The National Guard.

The Texas State Guard would come much closer to the traditional meaning of militia, altho as I understand it members don't provide their own guns (altho they can CHL, I believe )

marksiwel wrote: I wonder if this means as a Governor you could refuse to send your National Guard Unit overseas?

You could, but you would lose. President Reagan sent the Correction: Minnesota (not Arkansas) Guard to Central America on a deployment. Correction: Minn Governor Perpich (Not Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton) objected, sued in federal court, and lost. The Guard is a federal force, federal commands take precedence.

(Corrections noted above. The case is Perpich vs Dept of Defense, decided in favor of DoD in USCA 8th Circuit. Because previous Governors had tried this, Congress passed the "Montgomery Amendment" in 1986 removing the requirement for Governor's consent. You can read the case here: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/wbardw ... erpich.txt" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; I don't know that this actually has anything to do with the OP, but I wanted to be correct and complete. )

I suspect it was legal, altho it is an interesting question as to whether a Guard location is actually state or federal property. If it is state property, I don't recall any provisions carved out in the CHL statutes for banning CHLs on National Guard property. In your case, you don't say if you have a CHL or not. If you didn't have a CHL, perhaps there are some rules about guns on state property similar to the TPWD being able to regulate non-CHL firearms on state park and wildland property. However it may be that National Guard turf is considered federal property.

Although we like to think of the National Guard as a state force, it is really a reserve component of the federal military structure (after all, it is the NATIONAL, not the State, Guard), and it was established by, and is largely funded and equipped by the feds. The states get to run some management tasks, like promotions and so forth, and use them when the feds don't need them, but when push comes to shove, the federal gummint owns the National Guard. So it may be that National Guard bases and other property fall under Federal authority for security.

Never thought about this before, interesting question.