The Advertiser:
Retired Gen. Russel Honore’, Louisiana’s most well-known 21st Century military hero, said America is mired in a state of denial about its gun culture that’s harming the country.
“As a country we’re in a state of denial because we’ve confused the right to bear arms with the right to carry arms all the time anywhere or anyplace you want,” Honore’ told Gannett Louisiana on Monday. “We have to have a different kind of conversation in America and be prepared to speak about the politically unspeakable.”
Honore’ said the string of recent mass gun murders — culminating with the tragic movie theater shooting in Lafayette Thursday in which two victims died — should provide a wake up call.
“It breaks my heart to see that happen in my home state or anywhere in America,” he said. “We’ve got a problem in this country, and at some point the politicians have to get down into the community and find some answers to this problem.”
Honore’ had considered running for governor this fall but decided against making the race earlier this summer.
The retired army general, best known for his role leading the Hurricane Katrina recovery in New Orleans, said during his time in the military soldiers “were required to clear their weapons and turn them in as soon as they came in from the field.”
“The best place for weapons when you’re not in the field is to be locked up in the garrison,” Honore’ said. “Our biggest problem before Desert Storm was (soldiers) accidentally firing their weapons, and they’re trained.
“I’ve been around guns all my life, but when I was growing up they were locked in the cabinet unless you needed them for hunting.”
Honore’ also said he disagrees with those advocating for military men and women at recruitment offices to be armed. Some armed civilians have taken it upon themselves to stand guard at recruitment locations since the mass shooting at a Tennessee office this summer.
One such civilian accidentally fired a round at an Ohio recruitment office last week. Nobody was injured.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to arm military at the recruitment offices or to have civilians there with guns,” Honore’ said. “That’s the job of law enforcement. On our bases, yes, we guard our gates and our bases, but not at the recruitment offices.”
Field training with weapons owned by the armory and civilians with personal weapons. I think he is conflating very simply different issues. Moreover, if his Soldiers were “accidentally firing” their weapons, it was no accident (we’ve learned on the pages of TCJ that there are no accidents and that negligent discharge is a much better phrase), and they apparently weren’t well trained as he is claiming.
But his uneducated, simpleton ideas aside, take note of the claim. He is perhaps Louisiana’s most well known war hero of the 21st century. The Times-Picayune also has information on Honore.
“We’ve got to rethink and re-set our thoughts about guns,” said Honore who played a key role in post-Katrina recovery. “We have to focus less on ideology and more on practicality.”
Aside from the civil war he wants to start, there’s that assertion again: ” … who played a key role in the post-Katrina recovery.”
It’s obvious that he’s running for something, or is trying to bolster his collectivist credentials for some consulting or political gig. But I want to know more. As readers know, I have submitted Freedom of Information Act requests asking who issued the arming orders for the National Guard troops who were in the field post-Katrina?
My intention was not only to learn this information (the merit of such knowledge is obvious), but use it to lead to other information, such as who issued the order to confiscate personal weapons from civilians post-Katrina? The courts slapped down such unconstitutional antics, but it was a long time before everyone recovered their weapons.
Who issued the arming orders for General Honore, and who ordered the general to confiscate weapons? Is this something he did of his own volition, or does the chain of command go yet higher in culpability?
General Honore knows something, and I have not yet given up on finding the truth, even though the government never intends to honor my request or federal law concerning the FOIA. And if the reporters who wrote all of this about the general cared about real reporting rather than just parroting collectivist talking points brought to them by the handlers, they would help me find the truth.