Three Marines Dead on Quantico

 Yahoo News

A Marine shot dead a male and female colleague at a Virginia base and then killed himself, in the second fatal non-combat incident involving Marines in the United States this week.

Military investigators declined to comment on what motivated the shooting late on Thursday, which led to a 3-1/2 hour lockdown of Marine Corps Base Quantico that extended to the pre-dawn hours on Friday.

The shooter and his victims were school staff members and active-duty Marines, base commander Colonel David Maxwell said on Friday.

"This is a tragic loss for our Marine Corps family," Maxwell told a news conference.

Of course the gun-rights folks object to any attempts to control and regulate the personal weapons owned by servicemen. The result: record breaking numbers of suicides.

What do you think?  Please leave a comment.

Military Suicides - Worse and Worse

From the Trenches World Report

The most extensive study yet by the U.S. government on suicide among military veterans shows more veterans are killing themselves than previously thought, with 22 deaths a day – or one every 65 minutes, on average.

The study released on Friday by the Department of Veterans Affairs covered suicides from 1999 to 2010 and compared with a previous, less precise VA estimate that there were roughly 18 veteran deaths a day in the United States.


More than 69 percent of veteran suicides were among individuals aged 50 years or older, the VA reported.

This is a disgrace. Perpetual war is to blame.

Generals and Admirals Urge Congress to Amend Personal Weapon Privacy Law

The Star-Telegram reports

A group of senior retired generals and admirals are calling for Congress to amend a recent law that they say "dangerously interferes" with the ability of commanders to battle the epidemic of suicides among members of the military.

Legislation added to the 2011 defense authorization bill at the urging of gun-rights advocates prohibits commanders from collecting any information about weapons privately owned by troops.

Critics say the law prevents commanders from talking to service members about their privately owned weapons -- such as encouraging the use of a gunlock or temporary storage away from their homes -- even in cases when the commanding officer thinks the service member is at risk for suicide.

"The law is directly prohibiting conversations that are needed to save lives," states a letter sent last week to members of Congress by a dozen retired officers, including former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis Reimer and former surgeons general for the Army, Air Force and Navy.

"It unnecessarily hampers a commander from taking all possible practical steps for preventing suicide," one of the signers, Army Lt. Gen. James Dubik, said Saturday. Dubik commanded the Multi-National Security Transition Command in Iraq in 2007 and 2008.

As of the end of October, the number of suspected suicides by active-duty soldiers in the Army alone had reached 166, one more than the total for last year.

We had quite a heated discussion about this last month.  Gun control folks don't seem to have any difficulty with the idea that gun availability is a contributing factor in suicide.  The Generals and Admirals who are urging Congress to change this law seem to agree.

Only gun-rights fanatics argue such nonsense as people who want to commit suicide will always succeed in doing it even if there is no gun. No amount of surveys or academic research or indeed, common sense can dissuade them from their single-minded objective. They want to defend guns and gun ownership at any cost. They refuse to admit that the lethality and efficiency of a gun makes attempted suicide more likely to succeed.

To support their absurd argument, they insist that people who attempt suicide are never suffering from a temporary problem but are truly determined to do themselves in and will go to any length to accomplish it.  Some go so far as to say it's every person's right to commit suicide and no one should interfere.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

Military Suicides - What Can be Done?

The New York Times reports

With nearly half of all suicides in the military having been committed with privately owned firearms, the Pentagon and Congress are moving to establish policies intended to separate at-risk service members from their personal weapons. 

The issue is a thorny one for the Pentagon. Gun rights advocates and many service members fiercely oppose any policies that could be construed as limiting the private ownership of firearms. 

But as suicides continue to rise this year, senior Defense Department officials are developing a suicide prevention campaign that will encourage friends and families of potentially suicidal service members to safely store or voluntarily remove personal firearms from their homes. 

“This is not about authoritarian regulation,” said Dr. Jonathan Woodson, the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. “It is about the spouse understanding warning signs and, if there are firearms in the home, responsibly separating the individual at risk from the firearm.”

A thorny issue is right. How many disturbed gun owners are going to listen to the wife and get rid of the gun? Not too many.

This needs a bit more than non-authoritarian regulation, I'm afraid.  Since military personnel are subject to their superiors, the commanding officer should be able to do more than inquire.  He should be able to order the surrender of privately owned weapons.  It would save lives. Don't we owe as much to our servicemen and women?

This is where the gun-rights fanatics fail.  They are so biased in their single-minded crusade they lose sight of the big picture.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

Military Suicides - It's not About Multiple Deployments

The Moderate Voice published an interesting article about military suicides and how the NRA actually presents an obstacle towards addressing the problem.  But the part I found most interesting was the simple debunking of that famous lie that the problem is due to the stress of multiple deployments.

As discussed here, in trying to find reasons or causes for the alarming upward trend in military suicides, TIME Magazine reporters Mark Thompson and Nancy Gibbs suggest that combat trauma alone can’t account for the trend and offer the following data:

Nearly a third of the suicides from 2005 to 2010 were among troops who had never deployed; 43% had deployed only once. Only 8.5% had deployed three or four times. Enlisted service members are more likely to kill themselves than officers, and 18-to-24-year-olds more likely than older troops. Two-thirds do it by gunshot; 1 in 5 hangs himself. And it’s almost always him: nearly 95% of cases are male. A majority are married.

“Two-thirds do it by gunshot.” Of course, you say. Our military are trained to use guns, they are “the tool of their trade,” troops have access to guns and many personally own firearms in their homes.

Naturally, Defense and military leaders are doing everything within their power to prevent or at least reduce this horrible, unnecessary loss life among the troops.

As part of what these leaders are doing to combat the suicide “epidemic,” they would like to talk to our servicemen and women who own a personal firearm and live off post.

There is one small catch, however. A relatively new law backed by the National Rifle Association (NRA) seems to prevent them from talking to these servicemembers.