Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

In another example of legislating "for your safety", it looks like House Republicans take the lead on allowing mental health professionals and commanders to ask service members about their personal firearms if they have “reasonable grounds” to believe the person is at “high risk” of committing suicide or harming others by passing legislation. Senate will debate it after the election (my guess it that it'll pass there too) and be signed by Obama. I haven't heard of what the standards are to determine "reasonable grounds" or "high risk" but you can be certain those will be low hurdles to get over. Aren't those Republicans supposed to be protecting our 2A from those gun-grabbing Democrats?? Everything's getting all blurry, it's hard to tell them apart anymore.

“This is a national tragedy that Congress, all branches of D.O.D. and numerous outside organizations have been working together to solve.”

No, as always Congress is treating the symptoms and not the problem. Suicides are a symptom. The problem is a stressful military life away from family, long deployments, multiple deployments, etc (and that's just from what I see on the outside looking in). I'm sure our military men and women can give more examples to what the problem really is.

According to Defense Department statistics, more than 6 of 10 military suicides are by firearms, with nearly half involving privately owned guns. In the civilian population, guns are also the most common method of suicide among young males, though at a somewhat lower rate.

And what are we doing about the other 4 in 10 suicides that don't even involve firearms? Do we have legislation in place to deal with those too? Or will that number just go up because it'll be harder to kill yourself with a firearm? I kinda think that if you want to kill yourself, you're going to find a way to do it even if you can't use your own gun.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/us/wi ... d=all&_r=0

3 out of 10 suicides by military personnel being by privately owned guns? in 2009 there was 381 suicides - 30% of that is 114. So 114 were also killed by service weapons in use by the soldier/sailor/air(wo)man. how about that 4/10 like SB states? Obviously those account for much greater than either one.

I'll have to agree - privately owned weapons are of no concern. The suicide rate is, how it's being undertaken doesn't matter. Take away the gun and they'll find the next best thing... a knife... razor... hanging... drowning... jumping... pills... asphyxiation.

We've had our share of Suicides in the Guard, and many of them do stem from being away from family and loved ones. Thank God for my wife being here with me because I've only been able to see my blood related family a whopping 20 days in 4 years. When I go underway, I'm only with my family for a good 4 months out of the entire year. Yeah it sucks - you need a strong sound mind and military is not for everyone. What they need to do is give these guys coming back from deployments more R&R, more morale.

A lot could be said on the subject really, it's controversial and sad at the same time.

Sometimes you have to wonder who comes up with these things. You would think even the biggest anti gunners would see that guns aren't the only way to commit suicide.

Sure, Jake, I'll give the anti-gun crown credit for seeing that; but, Jake, they are anti gun. They don't care how guns get taken away, just that they do get taken away.

I've stopped wondering who comes up with these things, and I've stopped wondering why.

I've concluded that some conspiracy theories DO have some merit, after all.

We had two jumpers in one month at Ft Hood, no one proposed banning balconies.

Kreutz wrote:We had two jumpers in one month at Ft Hood, no one proposed banning balconies.

Maybe they'll put up safety nets like in the Chinese iPhone factory.

Perhaps they should consider banning cats instead...

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/litter-box ... d=16698365