Any time not in-theater, during training, a lot of time in-transit, sometimes even in theater, but that probably depended on specific location and MOS more than anything else. I remember seeing some peeps in Mosul walking around unarmed iirc, but they were probably fobettes and to be honest, I wasn't looking for who was or was not unarmed in any event at the time.
I can remember once we had a 24 duty detail guarding ammo trucks with everything from explosives to tank rounds on them. (this was stateside in peacetime mind you so YMMV) Obviously the point of posting guards is to prevent someone from breaking in or stealing anything, but we weren't even allowed to draw weapons from the arms room - we were all handed
pickaxe handles. The only person who got a weapon and ammo was the SOG and he got a 9 with exactly 6 rounds issued (IIRC). We had more than 6 enlisted there on that detail and we found it hilarious that the SOG didn't even have enough rounds to fight us off if for some bizarre reason we were to decide to steal the ammo trucks and drive off. We basically stood around all night playing quasi-baseball using those pick handles and rocks.
Ah, taxpayer moneys at work.
We were also never armed when guarding anything like buildings or motor pools either, which also seemed bizarre to me since Army policy was also to keep all vehicles in full running condition with full fuel at all times. Most wheeled vehicles were secured with chains or cables with padlocks through the steering wheels since they had no actual ignition per se; tracked vehicles just had all but one hatch locked from the inside then one hatch padlocked from the outside (also no ignition). You could have literally (pre 9/11) driven onto most bases (many had open gates at the time), climbed a fence in a motorpool, cut a padlock and driven off in a tank and all we would have been able to do was pick up the phone. At least you wouldn't be able to fire any of them, but /shrug (firing pins removed from 120mm, all MGs stored in arms room, etc). Hell, many motorpools didn't even have guards. Obviously that changed post 9/11, but point is that the military simply doesn't make sense a lot of the time.
Now non military, I was surprised when the KBR security folks escorting hundreds of people minimum per day through BIAP for example were never armed - that was their official policy. Our buses had kevlar mats (sometimes) over the windows because of snipers, but they felt that there was no reason to even try trading gunfire if fired upon and the SOP was to GTFO if fired upon. They did at times run armored SUVs with the buses that mostly cut off Iraqi vehicles (fear of insurgents blocking us in and then attacking), but honestly they never ever wanted to get into a gunbattle with anyone.
That thinking stays with me when I talk to friends that conceal carry everywhere they go. One buddy of mine carrys when he goes out with his wife, and we've debated the pros and cons of that. Would he be better off being unarmed and trying to run away from some unforeseen incident with her, or should he be armed, see a "potential threat", stop and pull his weapon and end up possibly endangering her?
but dude violence never happens even in secured area's like military forts. it's irrational to want to protect yourself when clearly we can keep our military forts disarmed and nothing bad will EVER happen.
It isn't irrational to want to defend yourself per se but you didn't answer my question.
What fantasy world do you live in that the odds of someone trying to attack you with potentially lethal levels of violence is so high that you must be armed at all times?
I mean seriously, I have a hard time understanding how one's life is so dangerous, unless there are special circumstances. I've been in a number of shitholes around the world and I wasn't armed; it would make no sense for me at all to treat US soil as if I were in Mogadishu.
