Veterans more likely than most to kill themselves with guns

FLINT (AP) — American service members are twice as likely as civilians to take their own lives. For decades, discussions of suicide prevention skirted fraught questions about firearms. But some families who’ve lost a loved one to suicide want to talk openly. They believe if the United States wants to get serious about addressing an epidemic of suicide, it must find a way to respect a veteran’s right to own a gun, but keep it out of their hands on their darkest days. One mother who lost her 25-year-old son to suicide says the military must do more to keep guns away from its soldiers in crisis. She leaned out of the tent at a small-town summer festival, hoping someone would stop to ask about her tattoos, her T-shirt, the framed pictures of her son on a table in the back of the booth. Barbie Rohde has made herself a walking billboard for this cause. She feels called to say the words, as much as they sometimes rattle the people who stop at her booth: “veteran suicide.”
A man in an Army cap recoiled and walked away. His wife said she was sorry, he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and struggles to speak of it. “I worry for him and for us every day,” she said. Rohde reached underneath her display tables, grabbed a gun lock and wrapped it in a blue bandana, printed with the phone number for the Department of Veterans Affairs crisis line: call 988, press 1.

“Here’s some free goodies for you,” she said, and tucked it discreetly into the bag with two T-shirts the woman bought.  Rohde runs the most active chapter of a nonprofit called Mission 22, aimed at ending the scourge of military and veteran suicide, which kills thousands every year, at a rate far higher than the general population. Three-quarters of those who take their own lives use guns. One of them was her 25-year-old son, Army Sgt. Cody Bowman.

For decades, discussions of suicide prevention skirted fraught questions about firearms, experts say, and the Army has not implemented measures that might be controversial. But a growing conviction has taken hold, among researchers, the VA, ordinary people like Rohde: If America wants to get serious about addressing an epidemic of suicide, it must find a way to honor veterans, respect their rights to own a gun, but keep it out of their hands on their darkest days.

Rohde travels to towns all over conservative, gun-loving east Texas. At this festival, the Marine Corps booth down the street was auctioning off an AR-15 to raise money for a children’s charity. She passed a toy booth, where a popular item was a plastic version of the rifle. She stopped to visit a friend who hands out free gun locks to anyone who buys his T-shirts, some supporting former President Donald Trump, others that declare: “God. Guns. Coffee.”

This is a place where people believe deeply in the Second Amendment, that guns are fundamental to the identity of the nation, that guns protect their families. And Rohde believes that, too — except, sometimes, the tool you thought would protect you might be what destroys you.

She tells her story to anyone who will listen: She had been worried about her son. Most of his left hand had been blown off in a training accident. He told his mom he didn’t know if he could continue his military career, and all he’d ever wanted to be was a soldier. He asked for his guns, which she had been holding. She’d hesitated. But they were his, and this is Texas.
Then one day, she got home from work waiting tables. She heard a car, looked out the window and saw men in military dress uniforms heading toward her house.
“Your son Sgt. Cody Bowman died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” they said. For the rest of the day, Rohde sat on the floor and screamed. She didn’t eat for six days. She decided she wanted to be with her son. She sat on her couch, crushed up sleeping pills, put them in a Blue Moon and drank it down. She guesses that subconsciously she didn’t want to die because she called a friend, who alerted her husband and she woke up in the hospital.

So when people say that if a person doesn’t have a gun, they’ll find some other way, she disagrees. She tried, and she lived. Her son didn’t get that second chance.
Now her life is consumed with this volunteer work, so that when she visits her son’s grave, she can whisper all the things she’s done in his name, to spare another mother this agony, to make him proud of her.

“I’m glad I didn’t have a gun. Because if I would have had a gun, I believe I’d have finished the job. I need to be here, I still have a lot to do,” she said. “And I wish Cody wouldn’t have had a gun.”