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At his Senate confirmation hearing yesterday, Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth refused to state whether he would follow an unlawful order given by President-elect Donald Trump. During the nationwide protests after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Trump asked the then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?” It is entirely conceivable that during his second term, what was previously a question becomes an order.
Everyone in the military chain of command swears an oath to the Constitution that requires them to disobey unlawful orders—and to be very clear, a mass shooting conducted by the government against its own citizens is definitely that. If the secretary of defense is unwilling to fulfill that oath in contradiction of a commander in chief who demands absolute fealty from his subordinates, it will fall on the uniformed career service members to uphold the Constitution and ensure that the military is not unleashed on American civilians. Although individual service members are legally authorized to use force in acts of self-defense against an imminent threat, an order to fire on civilians would be not just unlawful—a violation of the rules for the use of force—but a war crime under the laws of armed conflict.
An order by Trump to deploy the military and have it open fire on protesters would be catastrophic in a way few Americans who haven’t served in uniform realize. Unlike the National Guard at Kent State, today’s military is significantly more lethal. In 1970 the Ohio National Guard killed four protesters and wounded nine at Kent State University, firing semiautomatic M1 Garand rifles, which held an eight-round magazine and could fire 40 to 50 rounds a minute.* As one National Guard member there that day recalled: “I distinctly heard one shot fired; then all hell broke loose when 28 men fired a total of 67 shots over a period of 13 seconds.”
A modern military squad operates with roughly nine M16s loaded with 30-round magazines and three squad automatic weapons that each contain 200-round belts of ammunition. If today the same number of soldiers were firing for 13 seconds, as they did at Kent State, they could easily unleash several hundred rounds. Additionally, contemporary crowd-control tactics often result in “kettling,” in which protesters are pushed into densely confined areas, where individual bullets are likely to penetrate multiple people before stopping.
This has nearly happened before. When the Insurrection Act was most recently invoked, it was by President George H.W. Bush, who deployed elements from the 1st Marine Division to Los Angeles in 1992, after the Rodney King verdict. After taking fire while responding to a domestic disturbance with the city’s police department, Marines fired more than 200 rounds into a house with children inside after an officer yelled, “Cover me!” Thankfully, nobody was harmed, but as Major General James Delk, who commanded the joint task force at the time, would write: “The marines responded instantly in the precise way they had been trained, where ‘cover me’ means provide me with cover using firepower.”
The maximum distance a 5.56 mm bullet can travel—a distance the military calls the surface danger zone and uses for planning purposes—is more than 3,000 meters, or roughly 30 city blocks. Trump once said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” If he ordered units to fire on protesters in front of Trump Tower at 56th Street in Manhattan, for example, the rounds could travel as far as 86th Street, reach the Great Lawn in Central Park, and cross into the West Side. Rounds would likely ricochet in urban canyons, generating significant unintended harm to bystanders and property that would far outweigh any potential damage done by even the worst rioting. That’s in addition to any immediate carnage.
I am not saying this will happen. What I’m pointing out is simply that Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, couldn’t bring himself to assure senators or the public that it would never happen. That’s terrifying.
If Trump gives an unlawful order to open fire on civilians as a show of force, it would first be passed in the chain of command from the defense secretary to a four-star general, likely Northern Combatant Cmdr., Air Force Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, who is responsible for domestic military action outside Hawaii and Alaska. Like all service members, he has an obligation to the Constitution and the rule of law that supersedes following the orders of superiors.
Trump could try to persuade Guillot by offering a preemptive pardon or could relieve and replace him with a loyalist military officer, who would then communicate it to a Joint Task Force commander operating in a U.S. city, who would face a similar obligation to disobey the unlawful order. This could go on until, eventually, it reached a 19-year-old enlisted service member who would have to make the final decision while standing in a line in riot gear, barely able to breathe through his gas mask, his view clouded by tear gas, the American citizens he had sworn to protect in his crosshairs.
Although all military personnel take an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States,” the oath taken by enlisted service members, who make up the majority of the military, states: “I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.” How are enlisted service members supposed to split the difference while on the ground?
The fact is: Orders are difficult to disobey because—until proved otherwise—they initially carry the force of law. Whether service members are defending the Constitution, acting as loyalists, or engaged in mutiny will be largely a matter of perspective fracturing the chain of command.
This is all the worst-case scenario. But long before the military could be turned on American citizens, there are common-sense precautions military leaders can take to prevent the worst from happening. Commanders should guarantee that troops are not deployed domestically armed with machine guns or automatic weapons of any kind. Only M9s should be carried, if possible. If active-duty military units are deployed, the priority should be to in-state National Guard units who have experience operating within their states (or to deploy active-duty military police and other units with specialized training in crowd control and nonlethal de-escalation). Active-duty or reserve infantry should be deployed only as a last resort.
Likewise, military leaders should reach out to protest leaders to ensure that there is no miscommunication. After Kent State, an anonymous National Guard member who was there that day later wrote, “Most students did not believe our weapons were loaded, and those that did thought our ammunition was simply blanks, even though they were repeatedly and loudly told otherwise.”
Many soldiers won’t have experienced a protest firsthand; their reference will likely be what they’ve seen on TV and in movies. They must be educated about what to expect. What do appropriate escalation-of-force procedures look like? How should citizens protesting be informed that an escalation of force is occurring so they can disburse before it’s too late? What would result in a law-abiding citizen’s losing their constitutional right to life in the eyes of its own military? Likewise, commanders should be informed that there is nothing in the standing rules for the use of force that prohibits subordinate commanders from implementing more-stringent constraints in order to accomplish their mission.
The goal of any sound military strategy should be the avoidance of violence and its minimization. Even without explicit orders, military commanders at every level of the chain of command can execute this kind of training on their own initiative, from the lowest fire team leader to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.
Otherwise, young soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and National Guard members may soon find themselves the last line of defense against an unlawful order that could irrevocably damage our country. Hegseth certainly didn’t give the Senate any reason to believe otherwise.
Correction, Jan. 16, 2025: This article originally misstated that the M1 Garand is a bolt-action rifle.
