[alan]

For whatever it might be worth, my own personal experiences, as a civilian, with rifles and handguns on military bases are as follows.

Re rifle competition at MCB Quantico, Fort Barry, Marin County, Calif., Mare Island MCB, Vallejo, Calif. MCAS Cherry Point, N.C., Camp LeJeune, N.C., Fort Lee, Va., now and then, to enter Cherry Point, one needed a pass, obtained by showing vehicle registration. At other places mentioned, nobody, in-so-far as memory serves, ever asked question #1.

Going to a small pistol range in an odd corner of Camp LeJeune, the only thing the MP's said was "drive carefully sir". Admittedly, this was a number of years back, and things might have changed.

Re "things might have changed", the following attributed to P.O. Ackley comes to mind. Ackley supposedly offered, on the subject of change, "while change indicated movement, it is not necessarily movement in the direction of improvement", which always struck me as an interesting thought..