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by Riley Gaines
Category: You have to be kidding, right!?!
Photo of a residential subdivision in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
You can bet the place ain’t called “Levittown-East” however.
In the United States of America, with the Second Amendment protecting our natural right to keep and bear arms, one would think that computer difficulties wouldn’t stop gun sales in an entire state for nearly two weeks.
Alas, one would be wrong.
Since November 1, nobody has been able to legally purchase a firearm in Washington State because of a computer system in the state’s Secure Automated Firearms E-Check (SAFE) system being “compromised.” That’s the program through which Washington conducts its background checks, instead of just going through the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check (NICS) system.
When employees realized the system had been “compromised” on November 1 (they won’t say what that means), rather than figuring out how to fix it or putting some standby system into place, they immediately shut it down, making it impossible for gun dealers to run background checks for purchases. Since private sales are outlawed in the state, that effectively shut down all legal gun buying and selling.
In a Seattle Times report, Wendy Ferrell, associate director for the state Administrative Office of the Courts, said she couldn’t reveal the cause of the “compromise” because of “security reasons.”
“In an abundance of caution, we proactively took down our systems to secure them and are working around the clock with leading experts to restore services as quickly as possible,” Ferrell told the Times.
At that time, officials expected the outage to last “at least a week.” However, 12 days later, the system is still offline.
And officials don’t seem to be in much of a hurry to get it back up and running, based on a letter sent to gun dealers last week by Kevin L. Baird, assistant commander of the State Patrol’s Firearms Background Division.
“What this means to you: We are effectively on hold with any checks submitted from November 1, 2024, onward until AOC brings their systems back online,” Baird wrote. “Once that happens, the backlog of checks will process through as normal. But, until that time, we cannot make any determinations on any checks. We are currently working through as many pre-November 1 checks as possible, but even those are likely to be delayed due to another AOC system that we check also being down. We will do our best to get as many checks completed before their 10-business day wait period is met (to prevent unnecessary delays to your customers), but there may be some that we are not able to proceed/deny for a few days afterwards.”
That letter prompted leaders of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the firearm industry trade association, to encourage Washington officials involved with the fiasco to quickly find a remedy. In a letter sent on November 12, NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel Larry Keane asked state officials to quickly change to the NICS system, at least for now.
“ICS operates effectively nationwide, ensuring accurate background check verifications and accommodating safe and responsible firearm transactions,” Keane wrote. “Until the SAFE system is restored, we believe the NICS program is a sufficient alternative to maintain both security and access.”
Keane followed that statement with a warning to Washington officials that a prolonged delay in gun sales would not be tolerated by the organization.
“Please be aware that the inability to conduct lawful transactions may lead to further action, as we seek to protect the rights of our members and their customers,” Keane wrote. “We urge a swift resolution to these technical issues and stand ready to explore additional measures that should be taken to ensure Washingtonians are not unduly burdened in the future.”
The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) has also vowed legal action if the situation isn’t remedied promptly.
“This is simply unacceptable, and we will not tolerate it,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “Washington State citizens have had their rights under the federal and state constitutions suspended, and we will take legal action if this isn’t solved immediately.”
Soldiers do curious things for some of the dumbest reasons. Referring to the Medal of Honor, General George Patton once opined, “I’d give my immortal soul for that little blue ribbon.” That is objectively insane.
Table of contents
Medals and Awards
I never met an inspiring soldier who chased awards. The true heroes I have encountered were, to a man, humble. Jack Lucas threw himself on two grenades at once in the opening salvoes of the invasion of Iwo Jima, rightfully earning the Medal of Honor in the process. When this indestructible Marine found out I was a veteran, he thanked me for my service. I wasn’t worthy to polish that man’s boots.
Like others of his rarefied caliber, Jack deferred the glory to those who did not come home. I am ever amazed that, as a people, we can create such men as these. Of all the silly baubles that drive soldiers to ridiculous heights, be they funny hats, uniform patches, or scraps of colored ribbon, none should be so dreaded as the Purple Heart. To earn that medal, you’ve got to bleed.
The Purple Heart
George Washington thought that one up. The award was first called the Badge of Military Merit, and it was established on 7 August 1782. The medal bears Washington’s likeness even today. Washington only presented three of the awards, though he empowered his subordinates to deliver more. The Badge of Military Merit then languished unused until 1927.
While several military men worked on the project, it finally came to fruition under the leadership of Douglas MacArthur. The specific details of the modern Purple Heart were designed by an Army heraldic specialist named Elizabeth Will. The finalized award was formally resurrected on 22 February 1932, the 200th anniversary of Washington’s birth. 
The Purple Heart was awarded retroactively for wounds received during World War 1. MacArthur himself was the first recipient. It was standardized across all services in December of 1942. However, the Purple Heart is a military award no sensible person covets.
A Circuitous Path
Born on October 27, 1910, William Gail White was the youngest of three children born to a Presbyterian minister and his schoolteacher wife. White attended High School in Bakersfield, California. From the very beginning, he wanted to be a soldier. White volunteered for a summer training program called the Citizens Military Training Camp (CMTG) and was designated honor trainee. Upon graduating in 1929, White began competing as part of the Ninth Corps Area CMTG Rifle team.
A superb marksman, White was recommended for a commission as a Second Lieutenant, but he was too young. He enrolled in the San Jose Teachers College in 1930 but dropped out and enlisted in the US Marine Corps. In the summer of 1930, White was assigned to the USS West Virginia as part of its Marine detachment. 
Exactly The Right Type of Person
White excelled as a Marine. He set the Marine Corps record with the Browning M2 machinegun, scoring 396 out of 400 on the 1,000-inch range. After eleven years as a Jarhead, William White left the Marines for civilian life. He worked for Shell Oil until 1941. However, with war approaching, White enlisted again, this time as an Army Private at age 31. He was assigned to the 32nd Infantry Regiment of the 7th Division stationed at Fort Ord, California. During one training mission in California, White crossed the Salinas River alone on an inflatable air mattress to gather intelligence on enemy dispositions. This earned him the nickname, “The Salinas River Sea Serpent.”
By the summer of 1944, White had indeed become a commissioned officer. Now 34, he was assigned as the Executive Officer for the 3rd Battalion, 330th Infantry Regiment, 83d Infantry Division. He later commanded his own battalion. White made Major 25 months to the day after enlisting as a Private. Suffice to say, it takes considerably longer than that today. By late June, White was moving into Carentan, France, to relieve the 101st Airborne after they assaulted Normandy.
William Gail White Attracted Pain
Major William Gail White was utterly fearless in combat. While advancing through the accursed Norman hedgerows, White struck out at a run, rallying his men to follow. Throwing himself onto the far berm, he spotted a pair of German machinegun positions sited to produce a crossfire in the next open field. The next American to arrive was a BAR man. White did not feel that he had time to direct the man’s fire, so he snatched up the BAR himself.
He then neutralized both positions before swapping magazines and striking out with the heavy gun for the next berm. Meanwhile, the poor BAR gunner who had lugged the massive weapon throughout training and the landings in France scurried behind shouting, “But Major, when do I get to use it?” White responded, “Never mind when you get to use it. Throw me another damn magazine…”
Normandy in the summer of 1944 was a dangerous place. White and his unit were facing the 17th SS Panzergrenadiers along with elements of the 5th and 6th Fallschirmjager Regiments. These elite troops fought fanatically for every yard of French dirt. On 5 July, Major White was hit in the chest by a 9mm round fired from a German MP40 submachinegun. This bullet struck him a glancing blow, blooding him badly without penetrating anything vital. Later that same day he caught a grenade fragment to his forehead. Those two injuries bought him two Purple Hearts in a single day.
Major White Kept Collecting Bullets
In the next forty-eight hours, Major White was wounded three more times. He was first struck in the shoulder by a piece of shrapnel from an artillery round. What put him down, however, was a bullet along with grenade fragments that synergistically shredded his forearm.
These wounds, his fifth and sixth, physically removed a substantial portion of his forearm and rendered him unconscious. Three inches’ worth of bone was visible when they evacuated him. He awoke to, “The face of the most beautiful blonde angel he had ever seen.” The exhausted Army nurse did her best to clean his battered body and brought him something to eat. Despite his being declared a critical surgical case, White still had to wait three days for space in a crowded operating theater.
Army surgeons reconstructed his forearm as best they could and covered the wound with a skin graft from his thigh. White later joked, “Every time my leg itches I have to scratch my arm.” However, the damage to his forearm muscles was severe, preventing him from using a weapon. This should have been his ticket back to the Z.I. (Zone of the Interior—Stateside).
Not Done Fighting
Major William Gail White still felt he had more war left to fight. When evacuated he had stashed a captured Walther P38 pistol in his gear. The hospital staff had stored the German weapon in their supply room. White retrieved it and spent hours trying to squeeze the double-action trigger. When finally he could reliably activate the weapon, White felt he could return to his unit. He subsequently went AWOL and caught a ride back to the continent from England.
White tried to find his old unit, but this was a chaotic time. While fighting as a replacement in Luxembourg he was showered in fragments from yet another German hand grenade. That was Purple Heart number seven.
As Tough As They Come
We lack the space to do this man justice. White was captured by the Germans but escaped, liberating another fourteen Americans in the process. This earned him the Silver Star. On 10 December 1944, White earned his second Silver Star during combat in Strauss, Germany. This action saw him eliminate three enemy machine gun positions, two Pzkfpw Mk IV tanks, and two self-propelled guns while capturing 31 German prisoners. Along the way, he caught a burst of machine gun fire to the belly. That was his eighth Purple Heart.
As a physician, this is tough to imagine. White was evacuated to England for a major belly surgery and colostomy. He subsequently crashed on the operating table. The surgeons had the chaplain administer the last rites, yet he miraculously recovered.
Major William Gail White: Back At It
After less than a month, White had his colostomy reversed. Two days after that he slipped out of the hospital and caught a C47 back to the war zone yet again. 48 hours before he had been pooping in a bag. Good Lord, what a man.
While fighting around the Elbe River, Major White was wounded a ninth time, his last before the German capitulation. However, this shot-up old hero wasn’t quite done. He later deployed yet again for the war in Korea.
By now White was more than 40 years old. During one engagement in Korea, communist forces shot the antenna off of the radio he was carrying. Another bullet also took off his cap. He later counted six bullet holes in his parka. Soon after, while serving as an advisor to a South Korean special forces unit, White made a one-round confirmed kill on a running North Korean soldier at 900 yards over open sights using an M1 Garand rifle.
White was eventually shot through the right chest with a Chicom rifle round. This was his tenth and final wound. Despite lots of surgery and a laborious recovery, the man still would not die. He subsequently went on to complete Airborne school and serve as a Ranger instructor. William White eventually retired as a Lieutenant Colonel.
The Rest of the Story
The morality of employing two atomic bombs to end the war in the Pacific has been debated ever since the bomb bay doors opened on the Enola Gay back in August 1945. However, it is a historical fact that these two bombs ultimately saved countless lives on both sides by negating the need for an amphibious invasion of the Japanese home islands.
During WW2, the US government manufactured 1,506,000 Purple Heart medals. Most of these were planned for use in the aftermath of Operation Downfall, the invasion of Japan. After the war, nearly 500,000 remained in storage. Even accounting for those that were lost, stolen, or wasted, as of 2000, the national stockpile still stood at around 120,000. The Purple Heart medals that are awarded to service personnel today are all more than 75 years old.
Lieutenant Colonel William Gail White, the frag magnet, finally died of natural causes on 6 April 1985. He was 74 years old. White was interred at Maplewood Cemetery in Kinston, North Carolina. Eventually, old age did what the Wehrmacht and the communist Chinese could not. Wow, what a stud.
When former Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger unveiled his radical new vision for the Corps in 2019, many in the administration and Congress hailed it as a bold step toward confronting China. Berger’s Force Design vision was to place small groups of Marines armed with anti-ship missiles on islets and shoals in the South China Sea where Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines have territory. The same territory is now claimed by China.
The commandant believed that the U.S. Marine Corps had wandered from its traditional mission and legal directive to conduct amphibious operations in support of naval campaigns. Berger was concerned that 20 years of land warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan had reintroduced the “second land army” stigma that followed the Corps after World War II and Vietnam. He wanted to get the Marines back to their naval roots and prepared for conflict on small islands in the Indo-Pacific region.
In order to pay for the anti-ship missiles and associated sensors needed to implement Force Design, Berger divested the Marine Corps of all its tanks, heavy engineering equipment, much of its cannon artillery, and numerous combat aviation capabilities. In addition, Berger dropped the number of amphibious ships the Navy was required to maintain from 38 to 31, reducing the fleet by nearly 20 percent.
In a perfect world, this might still be enough to keep a nimble, sea-based presence in the three most dangerous global hotspots — the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, and the Western Pacific — but this is not a perfect world.
The Navy’s current atrocious repair and maintenance capabilities have reduced amphibious readiness rates to just 40 percent.
We now have only about 12 amphibious ships operational worldwide at any given time. Berger shifted resources away from these capabilities in order for the Navy to build a new class of shallow draft vessels called Landing Ship Medium. These new vessels would, theoretically, resupply the Marines across small, widely scattered island garrisons.
Interestingly, independent war-games conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies have determined that Force Design would be of marginal use in a war with China over Taiwan. Despite these lackluster findings, Berger’s successor, Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Eric Smith has doubled down on Force Design. Smith’s steadfast devotion to Force Design ignores the advice from all eight of his and Berger’s living predecessors, as well as the former four-star Marine Corps theater commanders.
Worse yet, not one of the nations potentially in danger from China, which was the catalyst for this redesign of the Corps, has signed on to the concept. Even the Philippines, the U.S.’s closest ally in the region, has told us that it will not allow U.S. forces to use its territory as a staging base in a conflict with China over Taiwan — much less staging offensive missiles. (RELATED: China Attempts to Intimidate Philippines with ‘Monster’ Coast Guard Ship)
Apparently, Berger created a product that has no market.
Military leadership is not solely responsible for this mess. Ultimately, Congress and the president have oversight. Civilian control of the military assumes that the civilians should know something about the military, or at least hire people that do. As with Afghanistan and naval readiness, the Biden administration and Congress have failed in that basic function. If you are a member of Congress from East Cupcake, Indiana, with no knowledge of military affairs, and are told by a service chief that he will reduce his force structure, save money, and still confront the Chinese, what’s not to like?
But the recent Congressional Research Service report should jolt both into action because the nation has lost key capabilities that Americans, rightfully, assume the Navy and Marine Corps possess.
They can no longer perform large peacetime sea-based contingencies like the 1975 evacuation of Saigon. They cannot execute large humanitarian operations such as the 1991 Sea Angel effort in Bangladesh or the 2005 response to the devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
They cannot conduct brigade-sized amphibious operations, much less division-sized assaults similar to Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Inchon. Even worse, the Corps can no longer be a meaningful participant in major regional conflicts such as Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom — it lacks the tanks, armored personnel carriers, and heavy engineering assets that broke through Iraqi lines in both conflicts.
In the half decade since the launch of Force Design, not one Marine Corps missile unit is operational and not a single Landing Ship Medium has been launched. Essentially, the nation has lost its emergency response force and traded it for no additional gains in capability elsewhere.
By the end of his tenure in 2023, for the first time in history, Berger had to tell the president and secretary of defense that the Marine Corps could NOT respond to missions in the NATO and African command regions.
The bottom line: the Navy can no longer perform the same functions that they have for the last 85 years.
There are two types of incompetents, active and passive. Active incompetents don’t know they are incompetent. They are dangerous because they don’t know they are incompetent. They are dangerous because they act on the zany ideas. Passive incompetents know that they don’t know what they are doing. They are dangerous because they tend to defer to the active incompetents.
Berger and Smith are active incompetents. Biden and Congress have been passive incompetents. Shame on them. If Congress acted today to repair the Navy and Marine Corps and return it back to 2018 capabilities, it would take at least a decade to recover. Our civilian leaders were sold snake oil, and the rubes bought it.
Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps Colonel. He retired as Chief of Staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab and served as a Special Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of Defense