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Gun control: Why the US military is fighting with the NRA

POSTED BY: NIKI2
UPDATED: Tuesday, May 21, 2013 04:43
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Wednesday, May 15, 2013 7:40 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


Quote:

US military commanders are trying to cope with an epidemic of suicides within the armed forces. Officials say they are frustrated by a recent law, backed by the NRA, that makes it difficult to talk to soldiers about personally owned firearms.

US military commanders are increasingly expressing frustration with the National Rifle Association for blocking what they feel are vital measures to keep troops safe.

The controversy revolves around the surge in suicide within the armed forces. The Pentagon is facing an “epidemic,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told lawmakers this week, with some 206 US troops suspected of taking their own lives so far this year.

“That is an epidemic,” he said. “Something is wrong.”

As they cast about looking for possible ways to bring down the rates of suicide, commanders say that the answer may lie in having candid discussions with their soldiers about their personal firearms--and to take personal weapons away from those who appear likely to hurt themselves.

“The majority of [suicides] have two things in common: Alcohol and a gun. That’s just the way it is,” General Peter Chiarelli, the Army’s former Vice Chief of Staff, told the Monitor this January, shortly before he retired. “And when you have somebody that you in fact feel is high risk, I don’t believe it’s unreasonable to tell that individual that it would not be a good idea to have a weapon around the house.”

The problem, say US military commanders, is that a new NRA-backed law prohibits them from engaging in discussions about weapons and safety.
“I am not allowed to ask a soldier who lives off-post whether that soldier has a privately-owned weapon,” Chiarelli says. The legislation took effect at the end of 2010.

While commanders are permitted to ask troops who appear to be an imminent danger to themselves or others about private firearms--or to suggest locking them temporarily in a base depot--the law requires that if the soldier denies that he or she is thinking about harming anyone, then the commander cannot pursue the discussion further, he adds.

Yet determining whether a service member is an imminent danger to himself or others has been an elusive and frustrating pursuit for the Pentagon.
“I’m struck by the number of folks who come in for behavioral health counseling and are rated as ‘low to medium risk’ [of harming themselves or others] and two weeks later commit the irrevocable act of suicide,” Chiarelli says.

Half of troops that killed themselves use firearms to end their life and “suicide in most cases is a spontaneous event” that is often fueled by drugs and alcohol. But “if you can separate the individual from the weapon,” he added, “you can lower the incidences of suicide.”

The problem, Chairelli says, is that “we have issues in even being able to do that.”

Officials from the Department of Veterans Affairs are backing US military officials in the matter. Commanders who have asked troops they feel are at risk to consider locking their firearms on base temporarily are making use of an important “stalling technique,” Jan Kemp, national mental health director for the VA, said at a conference late last year.

She pointed to a study that found that a large number of suicides are impulsive events. If someone plans to jump off a bridge and finds that the bridge is closed, “Studies show that they won’t go to another bridge,” says Dr. Kemp. “They will think about it.”

NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam says that the organization is “not conducting interviews at this time, in view of what happened in Colorado.”

Others add that the law is not meant to preclude commanders from talking about firearms. “Obviously, the intent of the law is not to preclude a commander from taking steps necessary to mitigate a suicidal or dangerous situation,” says Jared Young, Communications Director for Sen. Jim Inhofe (R) of Oklahoma, in an email. Senator Inhofe was the author of the legislation. Spokesman Young said the senator is “very concerned” about suicide within the military. “At the same time,” he adds, “individual rights must be protected.”

That said, Mr. Young adds that Sen. Ihofe has “reached out to the DOD and other interested parties to ensure that all concerns have been adequately addressed.” The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a question about what a changed policy should include.

In the meantime, some US military commanders say they need to find new ways to address rising rates of suicide. “In many circumstances, awareness of risk means removing firearms from those who we believe are at risk of harming themselves or others,” Brig. Gen. Jonathan Woodson, an Army Reserve physician and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, told the audience at a recent suicide prevention conference. “I would ask all of you at this conference to commit to making reasonable recommendations that will guide uniform policy that will allow the separation of privately-owned firearms from those believed to be at risk of suicide. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2012/0727/Gun-control-Why-the-US
-military-is-fighting-with-the-NRA


Good old NRA; they care, they really do, it's just that...

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Wednesday, May 15, 2013 7:53 AM

WULFENSTAR

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg


lol

Niki just...

lol

You are sooo stupid, its amazing.

"None of you seem to understand. I'm not locked in here with you... YOU are locked in here with ME."

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Wednesday, May 15, 2013 8:42 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


This amendment was apparently submitted because the base commander at Fort Riley, Ks. promulgated regulations that required troops stationed there to register privately owned firearms kept off-base and firearms owned by their family members residing anywhere in Kansas. It prohibited soldiers who have carry permits from carrying for protection off-base. And, it authorized unit commanders to set arbitrary limits on the caliber of firearms and ammunition their troops may privately own.

You can find the amendment in section 1062 here:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-111publ383/pdf/PLAW-111publ383.pdf




"When your heart breaks, you choose what to fill the cracks with. Love or hate. But hate won't ever heal. Only love can do that."

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Wednesday, May 15, 2013 8:49 AM

AGENTROUKA


Seems like they are approaching the issue at the wrong end?

If you have so many people SUICIDAL there must be a number of extra steps to take apart from "Are you suicidal? Give me your guns to make it a tiny little bit more difficult for you to carry it out?"

Treatment? Prevention?

They seem to be taking the easy way out in emphasizing the spontaneous nature of suicide because while the specific act may be spontaneous, the ideation leading up to it is NOT sudden and new.

Not to say it's unreasonable to want to limit access of suicidal people to weapons, but they seem to be deflecting a hefty measure of the blame here. If all these military employees are suicidal, the problem is not the NRA.

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Wednesday, May 15, 2013 10:27 AM

BYTEMITE


Very wise AR.

I would say the main problems are the military doesn't really do much support group stuff, stigmatizes mental health disorders as a weakness, and that they also tend to just prescribe anti-psychotics like risperdal to everyone.

Sure, anti-psychotics help with hallucinations and that's part of PTSD, but they're really not treating all of the problem there.

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Wednesday, May 15, 2013 10:37 AM

HERO


Quote:

Originally posted by AGENTROUKA:
Seems like they are approaching the issue at the wrong end?


If soldiers did not have access to guns then they would not commit suicide.

Makes perfect sense. We should apply this to everything the govt does. If Obama didn't have the IRS he'd never have targeted his political enemies. If the Justice Dept didn't have the FBI they'd have never wiretapped the AP. If the State Dept didn't have embassies, Bengazi would never have been attacked. If people don't get sick, universal health care would not cost way too much for way to little. If women don't get pregnant, abortion is no longer necessary.

Poof, solved the major problems of the day with a little leftist thinking. Now, home for supper, tomorrow we work on eliminating illegal immigration and border issues...by removing the border patrol and immigaration officers.

H

Hero...must be right on all of this. ALL of the rest of us are wrong. Chrisisall, 2012

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Wednesday, May 15, 2013 11:20 AM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


Quote:

Originally posted by AGENTROUKA:
Seems like they are approaching the issue at the wrong end?

If you have so many people SUICIDAL there must be a number of extra steps to take apart from "Are you suicidal? Give me your guns to make it a tiny little bit more difficult for you to carry it out?"

Treatment? Prevention?

They seem to be taking the easy way out in emphasizing the spontaneous nature of suicide because while the specific act may be spontaneous, the ideation leading up to it is NOT sudden and new.

Not to say it's unreasonable to want to limit access of suicidal people to weapons, but they seem to be deflecting a hefty measure of the blame here. If all these military employees are suicidal, the problem is not the NRA.



Sounds like maybe a bit of both.

Yes, there obviously is something wrong if many personnel are killing themselves. But I know about people who are feeling suicidal, that access to weapons at that stage can be a trigger - if you'll excuse the inappropriate pun.

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Wednesday, May 15, 2013 11:44 AM

AGENTROUKA


Quote:

Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:

Sounds like maybe a bit of both.

Yes, there obviously is something wrong if many personnel are killing themselves. But I know about people who are feeling suicidal, that access to weapons at that stage can be a trigger - if you'll excuse the inappropriate pun.



I'm definitely not trying to minimize that. It's a complex issue, obviously.

It's just that these people are not "regular" people, not civilians. They don't come there from all walks of life, driven by random or chemical or biographical events that drove them to a brink independently of where they end up trying to seek help.

They are part of a military structure that apparently contributed to their mental state (considering the dramatic numbers) and seeing focus put on such a late stage in the process (trying to prevent the physical act) in this article got my hackles up.

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Wednesday, May 15, 2013 12:42 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


Couldn't agree more

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Thursday, May 16, 2013 1:57 AM

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT


Quote:

Originally posted by Hero:
Now, home for supper, tomorrow we work on eliminating illegal immigration and border issues...by removing the border patrol and immigaration officers.




Robert Heinlein, the former right-wing genius and inspiration of the Libertarian movement, once suggested that the way to resolve the border enforcement and illegal immigration issue was to simply ignore the border and accept that the regions along the border benefit BOTH nations. Just let people who live nearby on both sides do as they choose, let people, goods, business and money flow both ways, unimpeded, the problems will go away.

It's in Expanded Universe somewhere, I think. Can't cite the story more exactly than that .

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Thursday, May 16, 2013 2:27 AM

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT


Soldiers are still free citizens, aren't they? Have legal, and civil rights, etc.? Including the Second Amendment.

So the Army doesn't really have any right to say what they do off base, during their free time, unless it publicly brings disgrace on the service or the uniform. On duty, on base, in uniform, the regulations and rules are valid and in force.

The Army is going about this one the wrong way to. Prevent the stress that leads to suicide: maybe multiple combat tours and deployments aren't a good idea. (Ya think?) Allow or require everybody coming off combat duty time to decompress. ( That's supposedly why the Vets from World War II didn't have much of a problem-- They were still enlisted months, sometimes more than a year, after the war was over with nothing to do but wait around for orders to be shipped home, and that process took even more time. Not zero problems, but relatively few.) Treat everybody coming off combat duty as a PTSD case, 100 %, up front, keep 'em ALL in counseling on active duty for a period of months. House, clothe, and feed 'em for a time without requiring them to do anything.

THAT WOULD BE EXPENSIVE. Of course, but consider the long term problems it might solve. And pols keep talking about how much we value their service. Sure we do, right up 'till we have to express that value in dollars.

I knew a guy served on USS Enterprise during Vietnam. They were on cruise over a year, 12 on, 12 off, 7 days a week, then returned to the mainland direct. Their families were shocked-- they looked and acted like pale skinny walking ghosts. The families complained to their Congressmen. Next cruise, same length, but on return , they were held in Hawaii for 2 full weeks. No duty, just enhanced rations, mandatory exercise outdoors in the daytime, shore leave. Then back to San Diego at an easy cruising speed. They looked, acted, felt so much better it was unbelievable, he said.


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Thursday, May 16, 2013 9:36 AM

HERO


Quote:

Robert Heinlein, the former right-wing genius and inspiration of the Libertarian movement, once suggested that the way to resolve the border enforcement and illegal immigration issue was to simply ignore the border and accept that the regions along the border benefit BOTH nations. Just let people who live nearby on both sides do as they choose, let people, goods, business and money flow both ways, unimpeded, the problems will go away.


That's fine until the giant spiders blow up Rio.

Hmm...maybe Austria, Czechoslavakia, Poland, France, Greece, Norway, Britain, and The Soviet Union were just being too defensive. Surely opening their borders to Nazi Germany would have made the problems go away.

H

Hero...must be right on all of this. ALL of the rest of us are wrong. Chrisisall, 2012

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Thursday, May 16, 2013 12:57 PM

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT


Quote:

Originally posted by Hero:
Quote:

Robert Heinlein, the former right-wing genius and inspiration of the Libertarian movement, once suggested that the way to resolve the border enforcement and illegal immigration issue was to simply ignore the border and accept that the regions along the border benefit BOTH nations. Just let people who live nearby on both sides do as they choose, let people, goods, business and money flow both ways, unimpeded, the problems will go away.


That's fine until the giant spiders blow up Rio.

Hmm...maybe Austria, Czechoslavakia, Poland, France, Greece, Norway, Britain, and The Soviet Union were just being too defensive. Surely opening their borders to Nazi Germany would have made the problems go away.




Don't remember which side of the border the giant spiders live on.But the big ruttin' snails and the African killer bees all moved North.

And Mr Heinlein was speaking specifically of the U.S. - Mexico border, with its particular problems, as was I.

Not that I agree with his solution, necessarily. I do cite him as a right-winger and a Libertarian

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Friday, May 17, 2013 7:48 AM

HERO


Quote:

Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:
And Mr Heinlein was speaking specifically of the U.S. - Mexico border, with its particular problems, as was I.


One solution...conquer Mexico.

I think we can all agree that had we simply conquered Mexico back when we finished up that war, Mexico would be far better off today.

H

Hero...must be right on all of this. ALL of the rest of us are wrong. Chrisisall, 2012

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Friday, May 17, 2013 1:39 PM

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT


Quote:

Originally posted by Hero:

One solution...conquer Mexico.




Well, I remember when screwball Pat Buchahan suggested that we annex Canada. Hard to piss those Northerner guys off, but he did. I wouldn't want to -- they carry those big freaking hockey sticks around. At least you admit that we'd have to conquer the Mexicans. Not sure it would be worth the cost. .

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Tuesday, May 21, 2013 4:43 AM

HERO


Quote:

Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:
Not sure it would be worth the cost.


Not today. But in the 1840s? We'd already beaten them and we could pretty much take anything we wanted, we should have taken more. We'd have about ten more states and everybody would be happy.

We should also have taken Canada...which is to say Canada should have joined the Amercian Revolution in 1776. Again, about ten more states for us and we'd all agree what bacon is.

H

Hero...must be right on all of this. ALL of the rest of us are wrong. Chrisisall, 2012

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