Retired Navy SEAL Dan O'Shea is quoted in the article: "Limiting access to weapons and ammo for 18- to 25-year-olds who make up 90% of the infantry ranks, and whose very raison d'être is to engage in close-range combat with guns to destroy enemy ground forces, will not stop suicides. The DoD should address the root causes of suicides, not send a contradictory message to the troops that we don't trust you to own, operate and keep safe the very tools of your trade."A panel of “experts” wants to take Second Amendment rights from the very people who fight for our freedom.
With a bias that conveniently removes the culpability and failures of the federal bureaucracy to help our soldiers and veterans, an “expert” panel recently wrote a report for the Department of Defense (DoD) entitled “Preventing Suicide in the U.S. Military: Recommendations from the Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee.” The report recommends that the federal government put in place various gun-control measures for our armed forces under the guise of suicide prevention.
The 115-page report recommends...a series of restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms of service members and DoD contractors that have been proven to be ineffective, or even counterproductive, and that would put an emphasis on reducing freedom, not finding and helping those in need.
These gun-control proposals would, in fact, almost completely strip away our troops’ rights—the very rights they are fighting to preserve. The DoD panel’s proposals include implementing a seven-day waiting period for any firearm purchased on DoD property; raising the minimum age for buying guns and ammunition to 25; developing a national database for recording firearm serial numbers; prohibiting the possession of privately owned firearms not related to the performance of official duties on DoD property by anyone who does not live on DoD property; requiring anyone living on DoD property in military housing to register all privately owned firearms with a base authority; and restricting the possession and storage of privately owned firearms in military barracks and dormitories.
And that is just the beginning of this gun-control slippery slope. The authors of the report also seek changes that would enable the Pentagon to gather information on soldiers’ private firearms, which have nothing to do with their job in the United States Armed Forces or as DoD contractors.
An obvious criticism of this series of proposals is that it is contradictory, wrong and problematic to train individuals to defend our country and to, at the same time, deprive those very individuals of the constitutional liberty to safeguard themselves and their families when they are off-duty.
Blaming guns for mental-health issues is, to be blunt, a convenient dodge for a bureaucracy that many feel has failed to satisfactorily help our soldiers and veterans as they serve and, later, as they readjust to civilian life. Officials can simply claim it’s not their fault, it’s the existence of guns. After all, this is how gun-control activists talk about crime; they pretend that guns—and they make no distinction between those that are legally owned and carried and those that are illegally obtained and carried—somehow cause crimes, not the unlawful individuals who commit the crimes.
I personally find this doubly offensive and maligning as the report was issued the week before Memorial Day. Said retired U.S. Special Forces soldier James Williamson, "It is stupid, contradictory and insulting to issue young men and women weapons and a chance to die for their country while restricting their ability to buy guns and ammo for their personal use."
John Farnam wrote, in part:
Retired SEAL O'Shea said, "The war on masculinity, which de-arming our soldiers is a byproduct of, has done more damage to the young American military male psyche than more gun-control laws will solve." The America's 1st Freedom article goes on to say: "O’Shea also took aim at the DoD leadership by suggesting a good and hard look at the top-brass could go a long way in improving the motivation and mental health of at-risk military personnel."As we witness our Armed Forces recruitment efforts repeatedly falling drastically short of even minimum maintenance goals, DOD in its infinite wisdom, now cynically manufactures yet another significant reason for young Americans not to enlist!
Under the laughable pretext of "lethal-means reduction," a new DOD recommendation consists of a demand for active-duty troops to "register" all privately-owned guns, even those troopers who are in possession of valid, state-issued CCW permits.
This will, of course, immediately bring-about a demand on the part of "woke" base commanders that all privately-owned guns (now "registered") be subsequently removed from homes (on-base or off) of troopers, including officers and NCOs, and locked-up "for safe-keeping" within a base armory.
Of course, rightful-owners will never see their guns again!
Another part of this impending new policy is that "twenty-five" is to become the new minimum age for any Soldier, Sailor, Airman, Marine to privately own any kind of gun, again even when the trooper already has a valid CCW permit!
So, we put into the hands of eighteen-year-olds automatic weapons, that we don't teach them to use (because they're all too busy attending "transgender sensitivity" classes), and then prohibit them from obtaining, or training with, their own weapons.
Said Del Wilber, a former police officer, U.S. Army soldier and intelligence officer, "How dare military bureaucrats even consider restricting gun ownership of service members? But sadly, this has become a typical military knee-jerk response. If those [recommendations] go ahead, it will not affect suicides, but it will impact already suffering recruitment numbers. What will then become of our national security?"
The article also supplies some interesting suicide statistics that I hadn't seen before. For example, Japan and South Korea, which have some of the most stringent gun control laws among all developed nations, both have suicide rates higher than the U.S. In fact, South Korea--where, if you can even get a license to own a hunting rifle, the firearm must then be must be stored at your local police station--has the highest suicide rate of all developed countries. In 2021 that was 26 per 100,000 compared to the U.S. with 14.1 per 100,000. In addition to Japan and South Korea having higher suicide rates that the U.S., it blows up the gun-grabber narrative when you also consider that Austria, Belgium, France, Hungary, and Poland all have higher rates than we do despite having national gun-control laws that are much more stringent.
