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Showing posts with label Home Guard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Home Guard. Show all posts

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Seems like a strange way to arm your armed forces

What the fuck is Denmark thinking? Denmark has a Home Guard, kind of like the U.S. National Guard, except the Danes (like the Swiss) issue these folks weapons, which they keep in their homes to facilitate rapid response. OK, so far, fine. But now Denmark is in effect disarming their Home Guard:
Some 4,300 volunteer members of the Danish Home Guard are being told to disassemble their rifles in light of the fact that one of the weapons used in February's shootings in Copenhagen was a stolen military rifle.
One of the weapons used in February’s terror attack in Copenhagen was an M95 rifle that had previously been stolen from the home of a Danish Home Guard (Hjemmeværnet) member.
As a result, the Home Guard has now decided that it will temporarily require all Home Guard members to turn in the bolts to their rifles, making them unable to be fired.
So now 4,000 members of Denmark's military have what amount to clubs. The M95 looks an awful lot like the M16 and I suspect it is a license-made copy of that US rifle. Because somebody managed to steal one, everybody in the Guard gets disarmed? I don't see how that makes sense. The Home Guard presumably has weapons in their immediate possession for a reason. By essentially taking those weapons out of the Home Guard's possession -- no bolt, no bang -- the Home Guard can no longer respond in a timely fashion to an emergency that requires them to be armed. I am led to understand that they mostly respond to disaster relief and non-combat stuff like that, but I have to believe they were given rifles for a reason. Is that reason gone? Help me out here, Danish readers.