johncantiusgarand

Dolomite, what you've articulated was what initially raised my eyebrows a bit. When I returned from my first National Guard deployment to Iraq, our first few drill weekends consisted of nothing but presentations from employees of our local VA. Some were about generic benefits, but many--if not most--seemed to be urging us to take advantage of the psychological services available. I remember one gentleman who was particularly passionate about it. He was standing in front of the room saying stuff like, "Everyone of you has PTSD, and it takes a brave person to admit that and get the help he needs!" Now, I knew that neither I nor most of my fellows had PTSD. There were a few who'd had rougher times than the rest of us, and some of the younger ones seemed more fragile and prone to that sort of thing, but the vast majority of us in that unit hadn't experienced anything traumatic. Deployments suck, being in a combat zone sucks, and going on combat patrols suck. But most of us hadn't shot at anyone, been shot at by anyone, or had any really close calls. There was some cumulative effect, I suppose, of repeatedly being exposed to danger going outside the wire as frequently as we did, but this was nothing like previous generations had endured during protracted battles and bloody wars. So I remember being mildly amused by this VA representative's impassioned pleas for us to come down to the VA and talk to their counselors. I was amused until one young member among us, who had already visited the VA right after he got home, started agreeing loudly with everything this guy was saying. He hadn't experienced anything over there that I would have considered traumatic, but there he was, giving us his testimony about how much the VA had helped him and how he discovered--through his counselors--that he had PTSD, and was going to be getting a disability check. Some of the other guys found this disability check idea appealing, and I told them after the presentation, "Mark my words. You can parlay your "I was in a combat zone" into a bogus PTSD check today, and you'll lose your gun rights as a "mental defective" tomorrow!" Many of them didn't believe me then, but they've since noted that, whenever there is a high profile violent crime, if the perpetrator was a veteran who supposedly had PTSD, that will be a big part of the news coverage. Neither that young soldier who'd spoken out during the presentation, nor another I knew of who jumped on the disability check bandwagon with him lasted in the unit for very long after that. Soon, they were showing up to drill useless for anything, because they were doped up on medication. And the VA wasn't going to give them pills forever, so they eventually became real pill heads that started pissing hot for illegal stuff on random drug tests and had to be put out of the Guard. I'm sure they're still drawing their VA disability checks though. I confess that it is guys like these that spring to mind whenever I hear talk of restricting guns for VA mental patients, and a part of me has no problem with that. But I do not trust the Federal government to always be so reasonable in how it interprets this new category.

Anyone know if there is any truth to this? And if so, how do you feel about it? According to PJ Media, Obama has directed that SSI recipients will be classified as mental defectives and prevented from owning firearms. https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/12/28/obama-admin-yanks-2a-rights-from-ssi-recipients/

At least that used to be me. I had no luck with the password change; my old email account no longer exists. So now I'm johncantiusgarand. I rarely posted before, but I've always enjoyed this forum, and it is very good to be back. I'll try to be more active here from now on.