Email sent to VA's Central Texas users raises concerns about anti-gun message. Veterans' Advocate Jim Strickland explains.

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by Jim Strickland

The following email was sent to all Central Texas VA (CTX) employees. The part about guns in the home hit a sour note with at least one VA employee, a Registered Nurse, who forwarded the email to Larry Scott, Founder & Editor of VA Watchdog dot Org.

The RN felt the email was "...specifically linking gun ownership with suicide. I found the e-mail both offensive, and not completely accurate." 

Is this just another "vets shouldn't have guns" message was the question that was posed to VA Watchdog dot Org?  Larry asked for my thoughts.

Here is the VA email...

From: Anderson, Neaomi E.
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2009 8:32 AM
To: CTXUSERS
Subject: Broadcast Message from Social Work Service - DID YOU KNOW?

DID YOU KNOW?

There is a clear and direct relationship between rates of unemployment and suicide. The peak rate of suicide in 1933 occurred one year after the total US unemployment rate reached 25% of the labor force. Similar findings have been documented internationally. At the individual level, unemployed individuals have between two and four times the suicide rate of those employed.

As well, economic strain and personal financial crises have been well documented as precipitating events in individual deaths by suicide. Stressful life events, financial and others, have significant impact on those vulnerable to suicide where typical coping mechanisms are compromised by the effects of mental disorder, substance use, acute psychiatric symptoms, and a host of other risk factors associated with suicide.

(Taken From: American Association of Suicidology)

DID YOU ALSO KNOW?

· A person dies by suicide about every 18 minutes in the United States. Each suicide intimately affects at least six other people.

· A gun kept in the home is 11 times more likely to be used to commit or attempt a suicide than to be used in self-defense.

· The dramatic increase in American youth suicide since 1960 is primarily attributable to an increase in suicide by firearms.

· Of elderly persons who commit suicide, over 71% use guns.

Taken From: Physicians for Social Responsibility, Violence Prevention Fact Sheet #1

The message to alert VA social workers to the possible reasons for suicide isn't a bad thing. Unfortunately, the message isn't effective. It quickly transitions from talk about suicide stats to an anti-gun message.

It doesn't say a thing about what the workers should do about the fact that people with mental health issues may be suicidal. As it comes from a VA employee to other VA employees there isn't any question; we're talking about veterans and their lawfully held weapons.

Some of the statistics used are lifted from
 http://www.psrla.org/program
_gun_violence.htm

There you'll find such gems as, "Unfortunately, our gun culture and the powerful gun lobby has not permitted our government to invoke tougher gun laws. In the populous country of Japan, the number of children killed by guns hovers at around ZERO."

It seems that each time someone wants to object to handguns they cite Japan's low handgun homicide/suicide rates. But, as grandpa always said, "That dog don't hunt". Japan is a society so different than ours it's like comparing apples to moon rocks. The Japanese are a tightly closed society with very different social and cultural mores than our own.

But let's look at suicide in Japan why don't we? In Japan "Every day nearly 100 people take their own lives, at a rate of almost one every 15 minutes" and the rate is rising. OK, they don't off themselves with pistols but a truly suicidal person finds a way.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes
/Japan/FG28Dh01.html

Also, thinking of Japan, aren't those the same people that murdered a few thousand innocents in an unprovoked attack on a small island out in the Pacific a few years ago? And then set up some of the most horrific death camps and methods of torture in recorded history as they followed their goal of world domination? And they don't have weapons or a truly militarized Army because they can't be trusted with it and they agreed to that when they surrendered? And they're a country that is still occupied by the conquerors?

Yeah, let's be more like the Japanese.

Today's Japanese have "suicide web sites" where they learn how to gas themselves to death, "Unlike more traditional methods such as hanging or drugs overdoses, the production of hydrogen sulfide endangers people in the same building and turns what used to be private despair into a public event."
 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new
s/world/asia/article4170649.ece

When she says, "The dramatic increase in American youth suicide since 1960 is primarily attributable to an increase in suicide by firearms", she's dead wrong. Again, look at the Japanese. The suicide rate amongst their young people is rising at a rate similar to ours but without the handguns.

Ms. Anderson notes, "Of elderly persons who commit suicide, over 71% use guns." We'll assume she means Americans. Does that mean that they wouldn't have committed suicide if no gun had been available? Or is the handgun just a quick way to reach a goal that they would have gotten to anyhow?

The article I referenced earlier says, "Since 2003...78 middle-aged men apparently committed suicide by hanging themselves from tree branches". OK, I think I'd prefer to shoot myself if I had to make that choice.

Anderson's memo reveals a bias against handguns. The argument against hand guns shouldn't be because people kill themselves with hand guns. If one must argue against handguns, there are other, more valid reasons to lobby against our free wheeling hand gun lovin' society. She would have done better to leave out the guns and stick to a message of how to detect a potential suicide in the veteran patient population.

Anderson uses alarming, misleading statistics to gather attention and then...nothing. She offers no solutions for readers and there's where she fails.

Where's the suicide prevention hot line number at the very least?

This isn't a suicide prevention memo that alerts VA social workers about numbers of suicides amongst veterans. The memo doesn't educate anyone on how to detect a veteran who may be contemplating suicide. There isn't a single word of what to do if the social worker believes that he or she has a veteran patient who has suicide potential.

This is nothing more than a skewed message that veterans shouldn't have the right to keep and bear arms. If you're older...no weapons for you. If you're stressed, we should take away the guns. If you're a young person, don't learn how to safely and responsibly use weapons...just hand them over.

It's unfortunate that Anderson chose 09/11/2009 to send out her anti-gun note. On that very day 8 years ago, if there had been a few handguns flying with the crews of just 4 airplanes, we may have an entirely different memory to look back on.

Hers is the wrong message at the wrong time and it has no place being an official VA memo.

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TOPICS: veterans, veterans' benefits, VA, Department of Veterans' Affairs, anti-gun, suicide prevention