Rhode Island Military Funeral Honors

Section 30-25-1 requires that whenever the family of an honorably discharged deceased soldier, sailor, airperson, or marine of any of the wars in which the United States has been engaged requests it, or a veterans' organization authorized to conduct the funeral requests it, the adjutant general of the state shall furnish a firing squad. The clause that makes this entry worth reading was added in 2006 and it is a small act of legislative stubbornness. The firing squad is to be furnished "wherever possible, complete with a bugler to play 'Taps', live and not synthesized or pre-recorded." The bugler may be on active duty or an honorably discharged veteran. Rhode Island wrote into its statute book that a recording is not good enough. Most jurisdictions solved the shortage of buglers with an electronic bugle that plays a recording from the bell; Rhode Island's law says live and says so twice in the same section. "Wherever possible" keeps it from being an absolute duty, but a family that wants a live bugler has a statute to point at, and the adjutant general's office is the place to ask. The section has two fallbacks that show how long it has been on the books. Where the National Guard has been called, ordered, or drafted into federal service for war or an emergency, the adjutant general furnishes the firing squad from the first regiment, Rhode Island state guard, again with a live bugler wherever possible. And where a member of the armed forces dies in service and the body is brought back to Rhode Island for burial, if it is not possible to arrange a federal firing squad, the adjutant general is authorized and directed to furnish one. Section 30-25-2 requires the general assembly to appropriate annually such sums as it deems necessary to carry out section 30-25-1, with payment on vouchers approved by the adjutant general, so the honors are funded rather than volunteered. The request runs through the funeral director in practice. It is not automatic: the statute is triggered by a request from the family or an authorized veterans' organization, so someone has to ask. No disability rating is involved, and the gate is wartime service with an honorable discharge, so the rating filter never hides this entry.