National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRANK. Madam Chair, I rise today to offer my amendment to return common sense to decisions surrounding a member of the United States Armed Forces' constitutional rights.

Since 2015, our men and women in uniform have required approval from their base commander to carry a personal firearm on that installation.

Let's be clear: Constitutional rights are the baseline for all Americans, guaranteed to all Americans, and can only be restricted in thoughtful and specific decisions.

The Department's policy for the last 10 years has instead approached the Second Amendment from a no-first perspective, requiring our servicemembers to seek government approval to exercise their Second Amendment right. That is not how the Constitution works.

Madam Chair, I find it hard to reconcile the idea that it is these same men and women who use firearms every single day in training and in defending our country who are being denied access to their personal property.

Our servicemembers are extensively trained in firearms safety and in best practices. Yet, the Department treated them as blanket security risks.

I am grateful to the Secretary of War for taking recent action to ensure that applications for conceal carry on Department property are reviewed with a presumption of approval, returning these decisions to a commonsense yes-first perspective.

My amendment codifies this presumption to ensure that we are protecting the rights of our troops and adds a layer of accountability, requiring the Department to tell a servicemember why their application was rejected.

My amendment is straightforward: It preserves a base commander's ability to protect their installation and to deny the right to conceal carry. It restores the universal applicability of constitutional rights, especially to those men and women who serve us every day, and it increases transparency in those decisions.

Madam Chair, I thank Chairman Rogers for his support and his assistance in this effort. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

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Mr. CRANK. Madam Chair, I appreciate my colleague's concern. It is always interesting that there are some who put all of these stipulations on the rights of firearm owners, on the Second Amendment.

I always wondered to myself what would happen if we put those same restrictions on the First Amendment, if they had to get approval from the base commander before they exercise their First Amendment right, if they had to get approval from the base commander before they went to church and their First Amendment right to worship God as they see fit. I wonder how some of my colleagues might think of that, Madam Chair.

This is a commonsense approach. These are the men and women who use firearms every single day to defend our rights, our First Amendment rights, our Second Amendment rights, and all of our constitutional rights guaranteed to us in the Bill of Rights. That is who we are talking about.

If we can't trust them to be responsible gun owners, then who in the world can we trust?

Madam Chair, my colleague talked about that a military installation is a place where there are homes. Does a soldier have a right to defend their family in their own home?

These would seem to me to be basic rights, and I guarantee that to the Founders of our Constitution, this is an absolute basic right.

Could you imagine our Founders looking at us today deciding whether the men and women of the militia, the people who carry and use firearms every day to defend us, whether or not they are capable, whether or not government can grant them the right to carry a firearm and defend themselves?

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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