The Coast Guard Administration is considering revising rules governing the use of service rifles after a guard in its Hualien branch was shot dead and robbed of his gun on Sunday, administration officials said yesterday.
At the top of the list for review will be regulations on whether guards should carry live ammunition while bearing a rifle.
In Sunday's attack, the dead coast guard, a member of the administration's shore-based forces, did not have any live ammunition in his rifle.
Under administration rules, ammunition is held by a second guard on duty who is not issued with a gun.
The arrangement, which separ-ates the rifle carrier from the live ammunition, is aimed at preventing rifle misuse while on duty and came about two years ago following a spate of incidents involving loaded weapons.
One officer killed himself with a loaded rifle, while another soldier on duty at his unit in Ilan County went on a fatal shooting spree.
An administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the separation of rifles from live ammunition has contributed a lot to the administration's safety records, but that it has caused problems of its own.
"The soldier might have been able to control the situation if he had been armed with a loaded rifle," the official said.
"The administration will seek to review rules for the use of service rifles in the service. The current practice has many pluses, but it might need to be adjusted," he said.
The official acknowledged that anyone who is familiar with administration policy would know they have a better opportunity to grab a coast guard's rifle than that of a military soldier.
The separation of rifle carrier from live ammunition is not practised in the military, from which the administration gets the majority of its shore-based forces.
In the army, a soldier will carry both a rifle and live ammunition while standing on guard. The live ammunition will be a stored in two clips.
The administration initially adopted the same practice after its inauguration three years ago before dropping it a year later.
The administration not only restricts sentries from having direct access to live ammunition but also denies the use of rifles to coast guards who patrol coastal areas.
Patrol forces are equipped only with a stun gun, a police baton and night-vision goggles.
Critics of administration policy also argue that coast guards do not get enough shooting practice or combat skills training.
Coast guards spend most of their time on routine jobs such as guard duty, patrolling and law enforcement missions and often do not get the opportunity to practise shooting for months at a time.
The lack of shooting practice also leads to weapon deterioration.
Administration shore-based units store dozens of rifles, but only a few of them are in good condition, according to administration officials.
Also, the administration leadership has been known to prioritize the development of its sea forces, planning to turn the coast guard into an agency responsible only for maritime affairs.
In these conditions, the administration's shore-based forces become the last to be considered and were once said to be excluded from the planned maritime affairs agency that the coast guard is to be in the future.
The administration's shore-based forces now have nowhere to go since they are no longer wanted by the military, which counts them as "reduced forces" in the Chingshih personnel streamlining project.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching