when i heard about the shooting at ft. hood earlier this week, one thing stood out to me. the alleged shooter, 34-year-old army specialist, ivan lopez, was being treated for mental health issues. mental health issues, many believe to be caused by duty in afghanistan and iraq are a scourge upon our military. in 2012, a record 350 soldiers killed themselves. that s more than died on the battlefield. between 2008 and 2010, nearly two-thirds of all suicides in the united states military involved firearms. one former military heavyweight whom i talked with last year said, enough. you re a general. you re an army man. you ve spent your life around guns. you re comfortable with them. you know they can be used responsibly. you also feel that when people are at risk in terms of mental issues, it is very dangerous for them to have access to guns. it is very dangerous for them to have access to guns. i believe that. general crowley will discuss the report and the suicide prevention efforts
being treated for mental health issues. mental health issues, many believe to be caused by duty in afghanistan and iraq are a scourge upon our military. in 2012, a record 350 soldiers killed themselves. that s more than died on the battlefield. between 2008 and 2010, nearly 2/3 of all suicides in the united states military involve firearms. one former military heavyweight whom i talked with last year said, enough. you re a general, an army man. you ve spent your life around guns. you re comfortable with them. you know they can be used responsibly. you also feel that when people are at risk in terms of mental issues, it is very dangerous for them to have access to guns. it is very dangerous for them to have access to guns. i believe that. general crowley will discuss the report and the suicide prevention efforts in the army. general peter carell i, now
has committed suicide or has tried to. that s not a call to write off veterans as too hurt to come back home. that means something specific. something nonromantic. something you don t need to write fiction about. it needs policy. it means as a country, we need stronger suicide prevention efforts for our veterans. that s something we can do. the only iraq combat veteran in the united states senate, senator john walsh of montana, just this week introduced a bill to up suicide prevention efforts for veterans. we need that. what we don t need is to use what just happened at ft. hood, the latest in a long line of mass shootings in america, what we don t need is to use what just happened at ft. hood as an excuse to stereotype veterans as broken because of their time as war. if we think of every other mass shooting in america as somehow particular to the circumstances of that shooting, but this one is explained away as, oh, he was an iraq vet. what you see in the headlines about this story al
hooray for that. that s progress. the backlog is so giant even with the 44% cut, it still means more than 300,000 veterans are still in the backlog waiting a minimum of 125 days to even hear back from the va about their disability claim, even if what they re going to hear is no. more than 300,000, that is still outrageous. that s for disability claims. paying attention to veterans instead of stereotyping them also means appreciating that the stress and trauma of life at war and combat and specifically the contrast between that and civilian life, it does have mental health consequences and in particular it can heighten the risk of suicide. a majority of iraq and afghanistan veterans say they know a fellow service member who has committed suicide or has tried to. that s not a call to write off veterans as too hurt to come back home. that means something specific. something nonromantic. something you don t need to write fiction about. it needs policy. it means as a country, we need strong
just this week introduced a bill to up suicide prevention efforts for veterans. we need that. what we don t need is to use what just happened at ft. hood, the latest in a long line of mass shootings in america, what we don t need is to use what just happened at ft. hood as an excuse to stereotype veterans as broken because of their time as war. if we think of every other mass shooting in america as somehow particular to the circumstances of that shooting, but this one is explained away as, oh, he was an iraq vet. what you see in the headlines about this story all over the country today, not only does that not help us understand what happened here, it is an offense against every other veteran who right now is getting that stigma shoveled on to them by a lazy civilian world and a lazy civilian media who find this dangerous veteran stereotype to be an easier thing to point to than the fact that america has a mass shooting problem.