Gun therapy hits unexpected snag

[james_davis_nicoll]

[Chris Kyle] returned home to become a best-selling author and a mentor to other veterans, sometimes taking them shooting at a gun range near his Texas home as a kind of therapy to salve battlefield scars, friends said. One such veteran was Eddie Ray Routh, a 25-year-old Marine who had served tours in Iraq and Haiti.

But on Saturday, far from a war zone, Mr. Routh turned on Mr. Kyle, 38, and a second man, Chad Littlefield, 35, shortly after they arrived at an exclusive shooting range near Glen Rose, Tex., about 50 miles southwest of Fort Worth, law enforcement authorities said Sunday. The officials said that for reasons that were still unclear, Mr. Routh shot and killed both men with a semiautomatic handgun before fleeing in a pickup truck belonging to Mr. Kyle.

Comments

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

If it is combat-induced PTSD, then it does seem to be an obviously stupid decision. There isn't really a similarity between the physicality of actual physical activity of horse riding and martial arts, and standing there with a gun shooting at targets.

I didn't read James' NY Times link (limiting my hits on the site so I don't "run out" of free articles) but the CBS article reports Routh threatened to kill himself and his family over Labor Day weekend and was hospitalized, and again hospitalized just three weeks ago.

When I transcribed reports for a VA hospital, I did a lot of psych clinic reports, and the counselors and doctors always recommended PTSD patients store their firearms away from the home, if not completely get rid of them.

So I feel pretty confident that Kyle's and Littlefield's decisions to continue with "gun therapy" for this troubled man was "obviously stupid," and probably contributes to the LOLing, because people see this as a case of a gun nut believing the completely wrong things just so he can justify guns.

[jaylake.livejournal.com]

FYI, and mostly off topic, you can get around the NYT article limit by searching for the article at news.google.com and clicking through from there. It's a mildly annoying extra step which can be useful.

Re:

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

Hey, thanks! I didn't know that.

Re:

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

You can actually do it just by chopping off the end of the URL.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

Just to add to what I said above:

This is a case of a troubled man being lead down the entirely wrong path in regards to getting help for his condition, because he was told by so-called experts that shooting guns would help him, and clearly, it was not helping him. It was hurting him and Kyle (and probably Littlefield) knew that -- if they didn't know about his hospitalizations and threats of violence, they were negligent, and if they did know they were helping a violent, mentally ill man become more violent.

I don't think anyone is getting happy LOLing out of this, more like some wry, bitter laughter at the situation.