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Veterans' needs, gun control issues tragically merge at Fort Hood
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This week, we marked Veterans Day, originally known as Armistice Day, marking the end of World War I, the War to end all wars. Instead, we have the 80th commemoration, and tens of thousands of new veterans in a war of never end.
This Veterans Day, above all, has demonstrated that the U.S. War on Terror and the NRA’s War of Terror have consequences.
This week, the consequence of misguided policies have had tragic consequences.
The massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, only the latest mass shooting, points up the reality that sending soldiers to war, especially an unending war with an undefined enemy, affects society at home for the long term.
Just this week, also, the DC Sniper, John A. Muhammad, was executed for his wanton shooting spree seven years ago which took the lives of 10 innocent souls. He also was a Desert Storm veteran, as was Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.
It is seen in the disturbing increases in the number of suicides, in homicides, in domestic violence, in homelessness among veterans who have returned from the War on Terror, in numbers vastly out-proportioned to the rest of the population.
“Studies show that the suicide and domestic violence rate in the Army is higher than ever before,” Helen Benedict, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, blogged at New York Times.com. “The number of attempted suicides and self-inflicted injuries has jumped six-fold among soldiers since the war in Iraq began. And post-traumatic stress disorder rates seem to be higher among Iraq War veterans, at 35 percent, than even, some studies show, among the veterans of Vietnam.
At least 121 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans have been charged with a killing after returning from war.
On any given night, says New Jersey Senator Menendez, 131,000 veterans are homeless, of which 10,000 are in New York City and northern New Jersey. Indeed, one-fourth of all homeless in America are veterans “home” from the war.
“The veterans of these wars are suffering higher rates of trauma and breakdown than this country has seen for decades, so high that neither the military nor the Department of Veterans Affairs appears to able to cope. Veterans often have to wait months for treatment, and many have to travel for miles to find a VA hospital or clinic,” Benedict wrote.
In many instances, the soldiers are chastised by superiors or fellow soldiers for seeking out counseling; others are afraid of ramifications.
Major Nidal M. Hasan, a 39-year old Army psychiatrist, the accused shooter, had not been sent into war. But he had to counsel many soldiers who no doubt described in graphic detail the source of their nightmares. And Major Hasan, a committed Muslim, appears to have been deeply conflicted about being in the military. As it turns out, there were signs for more than a year and suspicions that Major Hasan, who had consistently received poor ratings, was possibly descending into psychosis; one superior even questioned whether he had the capacity to commit fratricide.
According to reports that are beginning to emerge, Major Hasan basically was shipped to Fort Hood to get rid of him – that was an easier process than trying to drum a doctor out of the military.
Shortly after coming to Fort Hood, Major Hasan, it is alleged, went out and bought himself a gun. And not just any gun. Major Hasan purchased a “Five-Seven,” manufactured in Belgium, known as a “cop-killer gun because can penetrate body armor. Lightweight and easily concealable, designed as a military sidearm to complement military rifles made by the same company, it has been described as "an assault rifle that fits in your pocket."
The mass murder at Fort Hood is wrapped up, as well, in a battery of other misguided policies that fall under the category of “gun control” – or the lack of it.
There are consequences of policy decisions – this one being the decision by the Bush/Republican Congress to allow the Assault Weapons Ban, which President Clinton signed into law in 1994, to lapse in 2004.
In just 4 ½ years since 2005 and the absence of an assault weapon ban, there have already been more than a dozen mass killings.
I think of the immigrants murdered as they were in their classrooms learning English in Binghamton, N.Y.; the Alabama family sitting on their porch; the eight people at Pinelake Health and Rehab in Carthage, N.C. I think of the Amish children, the students at Columbine high school, Virginia Tech, and DeKalb University, who happened to get in the way of a rampage.
And I think of the 43 people Major Hasan shot in the blink of an eye, “like ducks in a barrel,” someone said.
But they are just a small number of the 30,000 people who are murdered each year by gun violence – the equivalent of ten 9/11s a year.
The Brady Center report, Assault Weapons: Mass Produced Mayhem, documents the concerns of police chiefs from around the country on the increasing problem of assault weapons since 2004 (Brady Center, p. 3). For example, during the last year of ban (2004), Miami police reported that 4 percent of homicides were committed with assault weapons. In 2007, 20 percent were committed with assault weapons (Miami Herald, 2007).
The horror at Fort Hood clearly overshadowed what happened just the day after, in Orlando, when a man fired as an engineer a year ago and unable to find work since, killed one and injured several others at his former place of business.
War is not the only trigger; financial distress, marital distress, a slew of distresses can trigger a rampage -unfortunately, the combination frequently occurs in a single veteran.
Not only has the Congress allowed the assault weapon to lapse, but now there is a new assault on the rights of citizens to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” to automatically restore access to guns to mentally unstable veterans, under something called, “Veterans 2nd Amendment Protection Act” (S 669, HR 2547).
“When I heard of the tragedy yesterday, we were in the midst of planning a response to the latest dangerous legislative proposal from the gun lobby in the United States Senate - language to automatically restore access to guns to veterans designated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Justice Department as ‘mentally incapacitated’ or ‘mentally incompetent,’” Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said in a statement. “In light of what happened yesterday - a violent attack by an emotionally unstable soldier - it is even clearer that the proposal being pushed by Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina should be rejected.
This legislation could allow more than 100,000 mentally incapacitated or incompetent persons to arm themselves immediately, despite findings by the Veterans Administration that they are unfit to manage their affairs.
“The legislation poses a serious danger to veterans, their families, and the public. Anyone unable to manage his or her own affairs due to mental illness should not be permitted to take on the responsibilities of gun possession,” the Brady Center stated. “There is a heightened risk of suicide when a dangerously mentally ill person has access to guns. “For the safety of veterans, their families, and the public, the U.S. Congress should reject “Veterans 2nd Amendment Protection Act” (S. 669 and H.R. 2547).
The War on Terror might have contributed to the rise in violence by soldiers and veterans, but the NRA’s War of Terror is the reason for the rapid multiplication of horror.
In just a few minutes, Major Hasan, armed with that handgun he purchased for himself shot 13 people dead and wounded 30 more. 43 victims in a matter of moments.
Why should any one have access to such a gun? How many more mass murderers are we creating and will we create?
Certainly, those who return from the battlefield are not the only ones who have contributed to the massacres we have seen with nauseating frequency.
But it is terrifying to contemplate the tens of thousands of veterans who will be returning to “society” with the potential to become a mass murderer, and, thanks to the NRA and their enablers in Congress, have the machinery to do it.
There is much we need to do on behalf of our Veterans, and the Obama Administration seems to be doing it – with a program to increase help with PTSD, address jobs and homelessness and access to college, as well as removing some of the bureaucratic barriers to obtaining health care and providing more secure funding to the Veterans Administration.
But there is much we need to do for the rest of society, to remove the insecurity and fear, and, yes, cost of innocently becoming a victim.
Congress needs to reinstate the ban on assault weapons and to enact sensible gun control, including eliminating the gun-show loopholes, and enforcing responsibility of gun dealers (like the shop that sold the DC Sniper his arsenal) to properly control their inventory to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.
This week, these issues of controlling needless gun violence and helping veterans came together in one person: NYS Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel, a leading proponent in the State Legislature on behalf of veterans, who was honored by New Yorkers Against Gun Violence with the Distinguished Allard K. Lowenstein Award For Public Service.
Ms. Schimel, a board member of NYAGV and strong advocate for gun violence prevention, has been a leader in passing a "microstamping bill" in the Assembly earlier this year with very strong bipartisan support to give law enforcement officials better tools to solve gun crimes and homicides. Senator Eric Schneiderman (D-Manhattan/Bronx) has taken up the fight in the State Senate.
Microstamping is a technology that stamps the serial number of a gun onto expended cartridge cases recovered at a crime scene. It is an invaluable tool for solving and prosecuting gun-related crimes – essentially taking murderers off the streets quicker, before they kill or maim again.
It is one of the clearest evidences of how hostile the NRA is to the fundamental right of citizens to be free of fear as they go about their daily life that it has opposed microstamping technology and taken aim against the legislators who support it.
The NRA consistently takes the position thinks that the Second Amendment, interpreted based on a misplaced comma, trumps everything else – the right to free speech unafraid of intimidation by a gun-toting wingnut, and the very essence of American society, the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
“America has seen an epidemic of horrific gun violence at churches and synagogues, workplaces, health clubs, high schools, universities, police stations and now Army bases,” Brady Center’s Helmke said. “This latest tragedy, at a heavily fortified army base, ought to convince more Americans to reject the argument that the solution to gun violence is to arm more people with more guns in more places. Enough is enough.”
Is it? When will “enough be enough”?
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