Due to the massive increase in suicides by military members, the Congress and the evil Pentagon are jointly attempting to affect gun control as a suicide prevention measure. This idiocy would not only be completely ineffective, but is ludicrous and conniving on its face!
I would classify this idiocy by referring to the government concept of “never letting a crisis go to waste.” In this case, Congress, with the help of the Pentagon, is attempting to take away from military members the right to own a gun privately, due to the suicide crisis that was caused fully by that same Congress and Pentagon. A better measure would be to have total gun control during active duty, and zero restrictions when in the private sector.
This past July saw a 44% increase in suicides among active duty and reserve soldiers, with 38 suicides in that month alone. Through the middle of the year, there had already been 187 suicides, or one every 27 hours. “As of June 2012, more U.S. military personnel have died by suicide (2,676) since the war in Afghanistan began than have died fighting there (1,950).” This trend has been increasing for some time, and the likely number of suicides in the future will surely continue to increase.
This is due to several factors, and most all are related to, and directly caused by military policy. With continuous wars come multiple deployments. Multiple deployments cause all kinds of problems from being away from home and family for long periods of time, to battle stress, to fatigue, depression, and a frightful real understanding of the horrors of aggressive war. Watching, and worse, participating in the murder and torture of innocent men, women, and children, would have an adverse effect on almost anyone. This can lead to alcoholism, excessive drug use, and worse. Being separated from family causes instability, divorce, and in some cases, due to the mental breakdown of soldiers, loss of the right to see their own children.
Is it any wonder then, that suicide rates have skyrocketed? Is it any wonder that this problem is constantly worsening? Will it be a surprise to anyone that this problem will continue to plague military members as long as this heinous U.S. imperialistic foreign policy remains in place?
When one truly is intent on suicide, there are a myriad of ways to accomplish that end. Given the response by Congress and the Pentagon, will they next have a policy to ban the ownership of poisons, knives and rope? Not on your life, because the aim here is to carve another notch in the belt of banning the right to own guns privately; it is not to address the real problems.
Unholy aggressive wars will continue, and therefore, multiple deployments, and long periods away from home will also continue. The maiming, torture, and murder of innocents, including women and children, will go on unabated, and the consciences of those young men and women being used as cannon fodder will continue to deteriorate. Because of these things, many more suicides are imminent.
The government and military have no caring or sympathy for those they use as fodder for the corporate state. They care not about the well being of those who have been brainwashed and duped into believing that they “serve” for a noble cause. They have but one agenda, and that agenda is power, money, and empire.
The ‘State’ should not be allowed to exist!
“The state lies in all the tongues of good and evil, and whatever it says is lies, and whatever it has, it has stolen, everything it is, is false, it bites with stolen teeth, and it bites often, it is false down to its bowels.”
~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra [1896]