1. If you enjoy your Second Amendment gun rights as a civilian, FORGET military service. They, unless you make the rank of sergeant or above and only then if the post commander is willing, will not let you keep a gun, loaded, (military issue weapon or your own civilian weapon) IMMEDIATELY available to you for your own personal security except maybe on a battlefield in a wartime situation. They won't let you keep a loaded gun inside your barracks or at your place of duty on post/base. They will sometimes have you train with an unloaded military weapon and have you carry that unloaded weapon extensively. You will seldom have access to even loaded military weapons in peacetime. You will be vulnerable to possible terrorist or criminal attack on the military installation because you will likely be unarmed as a soldier! Sounds stupid? Yes. During the Vietnam era and earlier in American military history things were much different. Military post commanders THEN often allowed their soldiers on post to pack loaded weapons constantly and some even encouraged that practice back then but not any more. Yes, my friends, these days from about the 1980's, "new-wave-age" post commanders and others with authority over the military have been too much of a goddamned yellow coward and a God-forsaken hypocrite to trust their soldiers to be fucking ARMED so armed thugs won't kill them on post and in their barracks even in this day with Islamic extremists running a muck world-wide!!
2. You will sign away some of your Constitutional rights when you sign up. You will be under special military laws called UCMJ (Uniformed Code of Military Justice) and might not have the same rights as civilians accused of crimes. Punishments for crimes in the military are much more severe than their civilian counterparts. A soldier could be put to death for simply having sex with another person underage. A sailor in the navy could be sent to Leavenworth prison for many years for petty theft of US government property as a stapler, for example.
3. Male trainees may be subject to the authority of female drill sergeants. This militant femi-Nazism (to quote Rush Limbaugh) in our services started sometime back in the 1980's. Female drill sergeants will even enter barracks where male soldiers sleep in their underwear and take showers. If you have old-school male pride and don't appreciate some bull-dyke treating you lower than a child-murder or child-rape convict in the "big house" with a huge "gorilla" of a cellmate to make you his girly little bitch......you might think twice first before signing that dotted line. I, as a member of the male sex, would rather shoot myself between the eyes than have some little cunt of a bitch dressed in cammo and wearing a funny green hat with the brim folded up on one side growling at me like a German shepherd in a deep bull-dyke voice at three in the morning. This happened to my brother. He was awaken by such a bitch. The bitch growled slowly and low-voiced like a wicked witch to my brother in his bunk bed, "Get up and close your damn wall locker, soldier!!! Hurry up!!!" This bitch had the look of death with big, white snarling gritty teeth clamped tight and fiery snake eyes. This dog-ugly bitch also kicked my brother's bunk bed with "its" combat boot. Of course, I expect male drill sergeants to NOT be nice to their trainees.
4. Some people might not appreciate people of a different race giving them orders or calling them names. You may also hate it like a hot needle in the eye if your military superior were of a different skin color, race or ethnic group than your own. Civilians on base will often treat soldiers like dirt as if to say, "Look at that stupid idiot who signed up for this shit!" How would you like some punk younger than you with higher rank to give you orders or drop you for push-ups? How would you even like your fellow basic trainees who are younger than you to disrespect you! The military has scum from all walks of life come in. Some of them were ghetto gang members even. Some of them will steal you blind.
5. Some drill sergeants might still be hands-on abusive to trainees even though military regulations might even prohibit this conduct. My brother was body-slammed against a brick wall by a drill sergeant who snuck up behind him for standing in front of a barracks stairwell in basic training because he was in this drill's way. The drill was supposed to holler "Make way!" instead of being physically violent toward a soldier. Hollering "make way" for somebody to get out of the way was even specified in the soldier's issued training manual, the Army SMART book.
6. Military recruiters are notorious liars. They are lower than used car salesmen and lower more than ambulance-chasing lawyers even! Ask them any question you want about military life but don't ever bet your soul to get an honest answer from them. Their job is to get every sucker they can to sign the dotted line so they will sugar-coat things often to try to appease you. Take everything a recruiter says with a grain of salt. My brother was told by his lovely recruiter that he would have an hour to spend with our mother and I right before he was to get on the plane to ship out to boot camp. That never happened. He was hurried off the MEPS station bus and marched right onto the plane through the airport by some escorts, two punks younger than he was, directly from the MEPS station non-stop. My poor mother was stood up by the military. They don't give a shit about the serviceman's family.
I know all about this kind of crap. My brother told me everything and I have not missed a single beat. He was in the service. He found out a lot of surprising stuff about the military the hard way. Recruiters don't warn prospective enlistees of these kinds of things. It would not be in their best interest to do so. Damn shame, isn't it! Both my brother and I love our gun rights and loathe women who tell us what to do.
Now, I have told you everything you should know. I can't tell you whether or not to join the service. It is entirely up to you. You are going to do what you are going to do. You're a big boy now! Please don't ever say I didn't warn you ahead of time.
John B. Cavender