What's the right answer with PTSD and gun rights?
by
Chaplain Kathie
I know a lot of veterans with PTSD and they own guns. For too many not receiving the help they need, having a gun helps them feel "protected" instead of being any kind of danger to themselves or others. While tracking PTSD reports across the country for all this time, I am also fully aware of the fact guns are used to end their pain as well as take the life of someone else when they "freak out" usually due to a flashback and other factors of PTSD. So what's the right answer? Is it to not allow them to have guns or would it be more appropriate to get them the help they need?
Not such a simple answer. When you consider some of the law makers wanting to do the right thing they need to look at the bigger picture. A knee jerk reaction is that it makes sense to take guns away but they need to look at what this ends up doing. It stops PTSD veterans from getting help because they don't want to give up their guns. Do you want them to have no help as PTSD gets worse while they have guns in the house?
I do presentations providing awareness of what PTSD is and what it does. Usually there is a question and answer time following the video. Most of the questions are about gun rights. This is not a good thing. Innocent civilians never being deployed into combat are victims of combat when PTSD takes hold and a veteran opens fire. They know how to use guns and they know how to hit what they aim for. After all, this is what kept them alive in combat. When they come home, they have relied on weapons to stay alive to the point where they cannot even think of being without their guns and knives. Weapons become a part of them and they would never think of leaving them behind or not having one within reach because in combat, every second brings more danger to them, then they take that thought into civilian life.
The best answer to this is to make sure every veteran with PTSD receives the help they need and this requires learning to live a peaceful life again. They cannot do this with medication alone. They need therapy provided by an expert dedicated to healing PTSD and not someone with such limited knowledge they can't even understand what PTSD is. Too often this is exactly what the veterans are getting.
The issue of them not being responsible for their financial affairs is connected to the majority of veterans with high PTSD scores. Short term memory loss and irrational thinking are parts of it as well, but just because they want to go out and spend money they can't afford or can't remember to pay a bill, that does not automatically make them dangerous to themselves or others.
When the Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention Act was first being debated, my knee jerk reaction was supporting this effort. It made sense until it was pointed out to me that it could potentially cause more harm than good. I did not really understand how deep the need was to hang onto guns or how much this would hurt them emotionally. It was pointed out to me by one of my friends that they would end up feeling as if their time in combat meant nothing and that they were suddenly supposed to give up their rights just because they came home wounded by PTSD. PTSD hit them while they were in combat but they still had weapons, trusted to have the weapons and now when they are trying to live a relatively "normal" life again, they are supposed to give up their weapons leaving them feeling they are penalized for serving and risking their lives.
We read about veterans taking the life of someone else and think this is a huge problem. We read about them committing suicide with a gun but we fail to understand they find other ways. What we also fail to understand is that when we're talking about numbers measured by hundreds of thousands the percentage of veterans with PTSD using guns against someone else is low enough to show this is not the answer.
Bush Signs Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Bill into Law
The Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention Act (H.R. 327) is designed to help address Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among veterans by requiring mental health training for Veterans Affairs staff; a suicide prevention counselor at each VA medical facility; and mental-health screening and treatment for veterans who receive VA care. It also supports outreach and education for veterans and their families, peer support counseling and research into suicide prevention. The VA had been implementing a number of these programs, but not in a timely manner, whereas the Joshua Omvig bill mandates these programs and subsequent deadlines as a means of expediting the process for returning veterans.
The rate of 18 veterans a day taking their own lives does however prove the need to be better at taking care of them overall not just those deemed too impaired to handle their own finances.
In a perfect world, all our veterans would receive whatever care they need to recover from physical and invisible wounds, would be able to have the financial security when their wounds prevent them from working and would find their families receiving the full support they need to care for them, but this is not a perfect world. Less than half of PTSD veterans seek help to heal even though the sooner they seek help the better the outcome, they fight against getting help, partly because of the stigma but also because they do not trust the government to deliver anything. Can you blame them?
Depending on what part of the country they live in, their claims can be harder to have approved, harder to get to care and harder to find the best care. Even when you look at the National Guards, you'll find some states ahead of the rest with programs to address PTSD and suicides. The Montana National Guards efforts prove this and this program is being taken to a national level, but in between then and now, the Montana National Guardsmen are able to use this program while other National Guardsmen are receiving very little. Then there is the issue of the backlog of claims along with denials. There are too many obstacles already.
Threatening veterans to take away their guns ends up making sure less veterans seek help for PTSD and with the system the way it is, they don't need one more reason to stay away from the VA.
Bill protects rights of wounded veterans
It is clear from your recent editorial about S. 669, the Veterans' Second Amendment Protection Act, that you took the time to read the talking points of an organization opposed to my legislation, but never bothered to actually read the bill. I welcome the opportunity to inform your readers what it really does.
The Veterans' Second Amendment Protection Act requires a judicial process, rather than a bureaucratic one, to determine whether or not veterans are a danger to themselves or others before stripping them of their constitutional rights. These men and women are the only recipients of federal benefits who are automatically deprived of a constitutional right solely because they've been appointed a fiduciary, regardless of the reason. Recipients of Social Security and other federal benefits are not subject to such arbitrary decisions.
You wrote that the current process is "not easy." You are correct in one regard. While it is quite easy for VA to add a veteran--and family members--to the NICS list, it is extremely difficult for a veteran to appeal that decision. Just ask Corey Briest, a veteran who was severely wounded in Iraq. Corey's wife Jennifer, his fiduciary, wrote to me that a VA field examiner admonished them to rid the house of their guns or they could be prosecuted. Never mind that Corey was encouraged to hunt as part of his rehabilitation, and never mind that he owns a heirloom rifle, handed down to him by his grandfather (also a veteran) that Corey wanted to pass on to his son. And never mind that no one bothered in the first place to assess whether Corey was a danger to himself or anyone else.
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Bill protects rights of wounded veterans
