Tuesday, January 25, 2011

More troops lost to suicide than to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan

http://www.congress.org/news/2011/01/24/more_troops_lost_to_suicide

Here is yet another reason (as if we needed one) to make sure soldiers/veterans who are stressed, feel threatened, and want to harm someone (themselves, in many cases) should NOT have firearms.  And the numbers of suicides are no doubt much larger than are being reported, as the reported numbers leave out other categories.

EXCERPT:
For the second year in a row, the U.S. military has lost more troops to suicide than it has to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan....

Last week’s figures, though, understate the problem of military suicides because the services do not report the statistics uniformly. Several do so only reluctantly.

Figures reported by each of the services last week, for instance, include suicides by members of the Guard and Reserve who were on active duty at the time. The Army and the Navy also add up statistics for certain reservists who kill themselves when they are not on active duty.

But the Air Force and Marine Corps do not include any non-mobilized reservists in their posted numbers. What’s more, none of the services count suicides that occur among a class of reservists known as the Individual Ready Reserve, the more than 123,000 people who are not assigned to particular units.

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