Deployed Troops Raise Concerns about Pointing a Gun at Fellow US Citizens

Many of the increased calls to a GI Rights hotline are coming from Marine and National Guard troops deployed in LA who are confused about the actions of their leaders.

A resource counselor for the GI Rights Hotline says they’ve been receiving more calls than usual.

“We've been getting around 200 calls a month in normal times. I had 50 calls on Sunday,” Steve Woolford told Lolita Lopez at NBC Los Angeles, elaborating that most of the calls are from service members, their family and others following Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to LA.

These calls to a hotline for GI Rights, which we linked to here previously, come amid confusion about the deployment to Los Angeles, including a federal appeals court ruling late Thursday that the Trump administration can maintain control of National Guard troops Trump sent to LA against the wishes of the Governor. This ruling is a pause of the order to return the troops to the California Governor’s control earlier on Thursday. The matter of who constitutionally has authority over the National Guard will be taken up on Tuesday.

Some of the troops are very troubled by what’s happening, including being asked to point at gun at a fellow US citizen who is just exercising their right to free speech.

“This person never envisioned what they were signing up to do as being a situation where they might point a gun at a fellow US citizen who they might think is just exercising free speech rights or something like that. So this was someone who is very troubled about what's happening,” Woolford told NBC Los Angeles, describing one of the calls.