Looks like civilians aren’t the only ones being disarmed in the Katrina disaster area.

An old Philadelphia acquaintance of mine who serves in a leadership position in a National Guard infantry company, deployed to Bogalusa, Louisiana, on security missions in support of Hurricane Katrina operations, sends along a plea for self-defense help:

We fall under Task Force Santa Fe, commanded by GEN Mason, commanding general of the 35th Infantry Division. Gen Mason has issued us the order to remove the magazines from our weapons, a move that will put my soldiers lives in jeopardy.

If a soldier has a problem here, he needs to remove the magazine from the pouch, insert it in the weapon, pull the charging handle, aim the weapon, place the selector lever on “safe” and then fire. It takes a good soldier approximately 6-9 seconds to do this under normal conditions. This is not counting the stress of being under fire, or having a life threatening emergency, which would probably double that time. Hell, 6 seconds is an eternity on the street. We still have a threat here, the police don’t want us to go, nor do the citizenry. Since our arrival we helped reduce crime to record levels here. The main reason behind this is we are working with a LTC Landis of the PA Air guard who only wishes to go home, forget the mission, he wants to get his people and himself back to PA. We, on the other hand, would be stuck here, veritably unarmed in squalid conditions in Hammond, LA.

The reason given by Gen Mason is that he would reduce the chance of an accidental discharge of a weapon. I have to ask, what looks worse, an accidental discharge or a soldier killed by a criminal?

Sen Santorum is supposedly aware of this situation. Please help.

There’s more info on the much-needed–and much-welcomed–security operations of my acquaintance’s unit here.If you’re serving in the National Guard and have had a similar experience, drop me a line.

E-mail Sen. Santorum here.

***

Hmmm. Wonder if the National Guardsmen whom this Democratic congressman used as personal escorts to his New Orleans house were allowed to carry fully-loaded weapons? (ABC News via Drudge)

***
9/14 morning update: Just received from my National Guard source:

The situation I described in an email earlier about the PA Guard in Louisiana being told to disarm byt a MGEN Mason, has ben rectified. BGEN Jones, the overall ground commander, has overidden Gen Mason’s orders. We found this out at about 10 last night. Hope this didn’t start a little row somewhere.

Looks like it worked.