My initial, flippant response to the question posed by this headline was, "Yes." But (of course) the issue is complex:
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After the Newtown, Conn. massacre last December and the killing of the former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle at a Texas shooting range in February, the media, President Obama, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and even David Keene, president of the National Rifle Association, have suggested that people with mental illnesses, which could include veterans with combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder, be subject to stricter gun restrictions. Many states already have laws saying that people who have mental illnesses or have been committed to mental institutions cannot purchase or own firearms.
But the issue is deeply contentious for many reasons, and not just because it involves gun control and the civil rights of veterans. For mental health professionals and veterans organizations, it also raises questions about the nature of post-traumatic stress disorder and its relationship to violent behavior...
“PTSD is different from one person to the next and involves many different types of symptoms,” said Dr. Elbogen, a professor of forensic psychiatry with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who has been studying PTSD for 20 years. “In our research, we found that veterans with PTSD and high irritability were twice as likely to report getting arrested compared to other veterans, whereas veterans with PTSD and low irritability were not at increased odds of getting arrested. So, to generalize that all veterans with PTSD are prone to criminal acts or violence is inaccurate.”
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