So when some F-16 maintainer is crawling around in the intake after they take an engine out he's supposed to have an M9 on him, too?
Guys on subs out on patrol?
Dental technicians giving you a root canal?
It's simply not practical that every member of our huge armed forces be issued, trained on, and ordered to carry a pistol everywhere. It's not even a matter of money. The training would be inadequate just like most military firearms training. Half wouldn't be allowed to have a round in the chamber.
Being armed and prepared is a choice. If you order people to do it, the effect is lessened.
Right now, at Kandahar Air Field, you are required to have a weapon but ate. It allowed to have it loaded. You see a lot of M16s, M4s, and M9s with no mags in them.
In the middle of a war zone, Garrison has broken out. Until they fix that (and they won't), hoping for anything but prohibiting weapons on CONUS installations is pie in the sky.
The entire mindset of the military would need to change, not just one rule.
CONUS and even overseas military bases are as often as not guarded by underpaid, under trained security guards. That's how not seriously the military takes protecting its people. Not only can you not carry a weapon, but the guy who does is some out of shape civilian with maybe a whole two days of training under his belt, and they pay him twelve bucks an hour.
*shrug*. It is what it is. The military is a bureaucracy. It does bureaucratic things.