Green beret charged with murder

[cwise76]

Guns.
Doesn’t it seem like there might me more pressing issues than guns? I mean

 

[Lysistrata]

My aunt (career USAF) warned me in the 1970s, when I was against the draft, that a problem would develop if we went to an all-volunteer military. Now I see where she was coming from. There has been an on-going active effort by right-wing activists to recruit service-members for decades now, which threatens our national security. I'm not saying that this guy is a recruit, because I just don't know anything about him, and neither does anyone else. But this is a consideration. There have been enough arrests of service-members for firearms violations, theft of military equipment, etc.

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Judging by his picture, he was a Sergeant First Class (E-7), which mean he not only enlisted, he probably re-enlisted a couple of times. He would have also have to have completed WLC, BNCOC and ANCOC (NCO Development schools) to achieve that rank, and would have had to gotten a second MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) He was a member of Special Forces, which is a very elite school. It looks like he also completed airborne school and ranger school, as well as being awarded the combat infantryman's badge. He has a few badges I don't recognize, but I'm sure I'd be impressed by them.

This is a guy who was professional in his field and had probably had dedicated at least a decade to service, maybe more. I think something in him just snapped...

I'd have to disagree with your aunt. I've been both a enlistee and an NCO training enlistees, and frankly, it's hard enough to train people who actually WANT to be there. Training a bunch of people who were compelled to be there would make it harder on everyone.

In the closing days of Vietnam, we certainly saw the problems of a non-volunteer army, such as incidents of local law enforcement dumping their problem children in the military and officers getting fragged in the field.

Thank you for taking the time to explain all this to me. I understand how difficult it must be to train people who don't want to be there. But I remember her saying that it was people like me, who didn't want to be there, that helped keep things honest, and I don't think that she took things lightly, given her Vietnam tours patching up the wounded and talking young kids who had run into booby-traps into wanting to live even though they could never be husbands and fathers.

People do just snap. But I think we need to pay attention to recruitment efforts by right-wing radical groups that want the kind of skills that Web has:

Does the American Military Have a Problem With Far-Right Extremism?

Secret audio recordings detail how white supremacists seek recruits from military, police

A Pro-Trump Militant Group Has Recruited Thousands of Police, Soldiers, and Veterans

Soldier arrested near Troy's Black Lives Matter rally allegedly had 'ghost gun'

I do think that this issue needs ongoing attention. It's alarming to think that the service members we have paid to train would ever use this training against us.