Think Progress needs to start thinking

I usually like to read things from Think Progress when they are addressing veterans issues. This time their clear, thoughtful writing is missing in action. The easy way out on gun rights and veterans is to say they shouldn't have them or blame the NRA for them using guns to commit suicide. The honest, harder to grasp answer is, without guns, they find other ways. If we want to save lives, we need to take away the reason they commit suicide and not just take away their guns.

Given the choice of having their guns and getting help or losing their guns for seeking help, they'll keep their guns. It is as simple as that. When they don't have a gun to use to kill themselves, they use pills, which they have plenty of considering the VA and the DOD would rather hand out medications than treat them with therapy. They hang themselves. They drive their cars and motorcycles into trees and off cliffs. There are plenty of ways for them to end their pain but fewer ways for them to live with it. If we want to save lives, we need to take away the reason they commit suicide before anything else will work.

NRA Won’t Back Down From Supporting Law That Increases Military Suicides
By Marie Diamond on Nov 7, 2011 at 4:40 pm

In 2010, for the second year in a row, the U.S. military lost more troops to suicide than in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Half took place with personally owned weapons. Yet military commanders who want to intervene have their hands tied by an NRA-backed law that bars them from discussing gun ownership with at-risk troops.

A new report recommends that Congress repeal this rule, setting the stage for a fight between the National Rifle Association and troop advocates trying to stop the suicide epidemic:
America is losing the battle against service member and veteran suicides, a new report warned Monday, which could set up a political showdown between two perhaps unlikely opponents: Troop advocates and the national gun-rights lobby.

The report, issued by the Center for a New American Security, recommends that Congress repeal a provision in last year’s National Defense Authorization Act that bars military commanders from talking with troops about troops’ personally owned firearms — a factor in nearly half of soldier suicides last year. [...]

The National Rifle Association pushed for the ban on personal gun restrictions earlier this year after learning these kinds of rules were being put in place locally at posts around the U.S. Chris Cox, director of the NRA’s lobbying arm, said in a message to members earlier this year that it was “preposterous” that commanders at Fort Riley, Kan., wanted troops to register privately owned weapons kept on and off base.
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