Foreign Students and Weapons: How Escambia County Citizens and Businesses Can Assist NAS Pensacola

I feel 100% CERTAIN our local Escambia County citizens and businesses will respect this DoD rule and report any suspicious purchase attempts by foreign military students locally as requested.

Members of the Chamber of Commerce's Military Affairs Committee received the below email from NAS Pensacola Commanding Officer CAPT Timothy Kinsella this afternoon--relating to a new directive from the Department of Defense and a request of the citizens locally to assist. I spoke to CAPT Kinsella this afternoon and he reiterated his wish that this new policy be made known to citizens locally.   From the email:

"Colleagues,

In the wake of the Dec 6^th terrorist attack on board NAS Pensacola, the Department of Defense issued a change to policy whereby international military students are now prohibited from buying, owning or handling firearms within the United States. Each international student must now acknowledge that they are, regardless of other civil laws, prohibited from access to firearms.

While this policy is non-binding to commercial purveyors of firearms, I ask your assistance in educating our local gun-shops and retailers about the attached DOD policy so that they may assist us in preventing a foreign bad actor from gaining access to firearms. If nothing else, with their knowledge of such a policy I would hope that they would notify us of any foreign military student who attempted to buy a firearm from them.

Many thanks to each of you for your continued partnership, and please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or if I can be of any assistance.  

 Sincerely,

 CAPT Tim “Lucky” Kinsella, USN

Commanding Officer

Naval Air Station Pensacola"

I feel 100% CERTAIN our local Escambia County citizens and businesses will respect this DoD rule and report any suspicious purchase attempts. Read the full DoD Policy Here.