I am writing to provide public comments concerning the plan by the United States Coast Guard to arm vessels with light automatic weapons and to establish ‘safety zones’ around selected structures throughout the Great Lakes area.

Docket number 25767

If they are going to do it they should do it right. They look like a bunch of amateurs.

Much of their lifesaving and monitoring equipment is ageing and become unsafe and decrepit. The answer is not to buy them guns.

Why not provide guns to the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines to protect us from the North Koreans with their nuclear warheads, rockets and missiles? Why are our soldiers and marines sitting around in Iraq while our guys get pounded in Afghanistan?

So much for being the World’s Cop. We are turning into the World’s Baby Sitter.

The New York Times on October 16, 2006 noted that the United States Coast Guard told them that there was going to be nine (9) meetings.

I see where there were originally only 4 meetings scheduled and then 3 were added. I do not see any mention of the other two meetings.

Considering that the Coast Guard was slow and sloppy in the manner in which they divulged and arranged for the original public meetings I have to consider the fact that they were not well prepared in their conception of this plan and I expect that the execution of the plan will be no less flawed.

The Coast Guard is preparing to fire at ‘foam’ targets rather than the standard targets used by the United States Navy. In this regard the Coast Guard is both negligent towards the environment and does not appear to be committed to actually using target impact results as the targets will be utterly destroyed by the weapons fired at them.

To detail the first point. Using foam targets that will be shredded into minute particles by the weapon is environmentally unfriendly and makes the Coast Guard, normally a friend and protector of the marine environment, just another polluter who doesn’t care that this water in the Great Lakes is taken up by pipes and drank by millions of Americans including pregnant American women and American boys and girls.

The satisfaction the young Coast Guardsmen and Coast Guardswomen get from seeing the foam spray up into the air along with the water droplets does not balance out against the impact the foam will have in the water. I do not expect the Coast Guard will be picking up all the pieces.

To detail the second point. The target proposed by the Coast Guard to provide training for the Coast Guard personnel on the operation of the 7.62 mm weapons, which can blast as many as 650 rounds a minute and send fire more than 4,000 yards is inadequate to the task at hand and should be reconsidered. It is too light and does not reflect the type or behavior of target that the Coast Guard personnel will be expected to fire upon.

The 7.62 mm weapons, which can blast as many as 650 rounds a minute and send fire more than 4,000 yards are also known as ‘mini-cannons’.

The locations of the training exercises in deep water and in many instances smack dab in the center of prime diving and fishing locations does not adequately reflect the actual situations under which the Coast Guard personnel may need to operate (fire) their weapons.

Coast Guard personnel are not trained in artillery. These guns, if fired incorrectly at the targets, can cause much more damage to local areas than would be deemed prudent. These guns, if operated in the Port Huron strait off Sarnia could impact the petroleum refinery there. The likelihood that the Coast Guard ship would on hand during the few minutes it would take water borne attackers to assault the refinery in Canada is a stretch of the imagination I am not willing to take.

I am taking into consideration the fact that the guns will not deter a light airplane attack, which is a possibility here in Michigan considering we have the largest number of small airports and plan owners in the United States.

The guns will not deter a land based attack from the Canadian side nor a land based attack using rockets or light missiles from the American side.

The guns will not deter an air, land or water attack either, on the Fermi Nuclear facility in Monroe, Michigan, which short sighted planners built directly on the shore of the Detroit River.

If this plan to mount guns on the Coast Guard boats and ships is designed to take our attention away from the fact that the nuclear plants remain woefully unprepared for attack then it has failed.

The guns might make Rear Admiral John E. Crowley, Junior feel better but they aren’t doing the trick for the real problems we are experiencing in the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and New York.

The 7.62 mm weapons, which can blast as many as 650 rounds a minute and send fire more than 4,000 yards are also known as ‘mini-cannons’ will be introducing lead and other heavy metals into a marine environment used for drinking water and fished for food stuffs bound for American and Canadian tables.

The water and the fish are already polluted and we are working hard to reduce and eventually eliminate the pollution.

We are not going to be able to do that if the Coast Guard decides to save pocket money by using our fishing grounds, drinking water and shipping lanes as their private shooting gallery.

The United States Marine Corps maintains shooting ranges around the world.

The United States Army maintains shooting ranges around the world.

The United States Navy maintains shooting ranges around the world.

The United States Air Force maintains shooting ranges around the world.

None of them are spread out over sixteen hundred miles. They are contained within certain areas and used for certain operations.

The other branches of the military use real world reenactments in order to test, prove and hone their weapons’ skills. The Coast Guard, new to this sort of operation, is failing miserably at its first go.

The question comes to mind that if we need a military presence on the Great Lakes why not let the Navy and the Marine Corps handle it as they did in the War of 1812?

The treaties negotiated following that war needed to renegotiated, apparently in secret, with Canada, before this hair brained scheme was even mentioned to the people of the United States whom it is supposed to be protecting.

Before this process goes any further I believe that someone with combat experience should sit down with Rear Admiral John E. Crowley, Junior and give him a few pointers on how military exercises are carried out.

Little foam floats and a big pile of ammunition don’t cut it.

The impact on tourism is going to be great. The rest of the United States would like to think that somewhere is safe, especially considering the fact that the World Trade Center in New York City was attacked in broad daylight while the Coast Guard patrolled the waters below.

The northwestern United States is plagued with nuclear waste and loss of jobs.

The southwest continues to be incorporated into Mexico.

The southeast has been ravaged by flood and flame for the past two years.

The Midwest remained a place where the rest of the nation could look to for stability and more importantly a destination for vacation.

Now those tourist dollars are being put in jeopardy so that the Coast Guard, after being prompted by the Department of Homeland Security could launch into a hysterical response to a problem that does not exist.

The problems that do exist, like Communist Chinese and Taiwanese illegal aliens slipping across the border by van and light boat has not been addressed by the Coast Guard at all.

I understand that frequently the Coast Guard has been called to locations where these illegal immigrants are loading up. These calls have been apparently mostly been made from the Canadian side. When the Coast Guard gets there the illegal aliens are already away in a van on the American side and we all know how responsive to that problem local police are.

The result is that they get away.

The Coast Guard does a good job at keeping our coasts safe in storm and flood.

Considering they have had nearly 200 years hone these skills I think it would be best if they stuck to them and left the defense of the nation to the Navy and the Marines.

If our National Guard units were not sitting in Iraq getting shot they would be here with us protecting us as they were hired to do.

As it is the few hundred boats the Coast Guard can get together will never meet the threat they have been given to imagine exists.

The Quality of Life of the people of the Great Lakes States and the United States in general will be further impacted negatively as yet another aspect of our society becomes militarized.

Life cannot be at all points brutalized but Mr. Chertoff seems intent on trying to make it that way.

The real problems we are facing cannot be hidden behind automatic ‘mini-cannons’ fired by boys at foam targets.

The guns will do little more than become conversation pieces at dockside.

The men and women attacking the United States are not going to quiver at a 7.62 millimeter mini-cannon.

The USS Cole was attacked by a small boat pulled up next to it and detonated by madmen.

The USS Cole had enough fire power to destroy the boat but it did not.

Will these few Coast Guard boats find the terrorists?

What are they going to do about the millions of people that cross the border with legal papers? The terrorists that attacked the World Trade Center were all carrying ‘legal’ papers given to them like men like Mr. Chertoff of the Department of Homeland Security and Rear Admiral John E. Crowley, Junior of the United States Coast Guard.

There are millions of illegal immigrants in the United States today whose legal status still has not been decided.

There are millions more here who entered with H1-B Visas or under student visas (like the Egyptians that absconded from the University of Montana) or visitor visas.

These guns and these public hearings are a distraction from the real problems we are facing.

The overall training of Coast Guard personnel does not include these guns. These guns are an introduced novelty.

During training, accidents and possibly in action, there will be a great waste of time, energy and ability in setting them up, maintaining them and supplying them with ammunition.

Who makes these guns?

Who makes the ammunition?

Who will mount the weapons?

Who will provide the training?

Who will inspect the weapons?

Who is overseeing the contracts?

None of these questions have been answered in any of the literature churned out in support of these expensive and useless toys.