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I'll post this although it is a long read, and I apologize for that, but it is a letter I wrote to my local rag newspaper about this and was published.

As follows:

Dear Editors, I want to tell you a story about big government gone wrong, bureaucracy out of control, government incompetency; call it what you will, it is a travesty!
My podiatrist is a very accomplished man who was well-known within his profession and well loved by the public and his patients. He is also a full Colonel in the Alabama Army National Guard. In 2006 he was deployed to Iraq where his job was to go from forward operating base to forward operating base (FOB) seeing GIs with foot problems. While in a convoy going from one FOB to another his vehicle ran over an IED. Two men were killed and he was very badly injured. In other conflicts, he would have died. Vietnam, World War II; the care he needed would not have been available. But in his case he was actually medevac’d to the Landstuhl Army Regional Medical Center in Germany within 12 hours!
It was still the skin of his teeth for him. After months of treatment, he wound up with a metal plate in his skull, numerous metal screws and pins in various parts of his body, massive scars and tissue issues. He was medically discharged from the Alabama Army National Guard, and returned to his practice here in 2009.
He often flies, going to various conferences, and presents on issues involving foot trauma and repair that he encountered while in military service. He told me that every single time he goes through TSA security in various airports he is flagged due to the metal detectors and other instrumentality used in the security screening. He has a letter from the Veterans Administration stating that he is a wounded warrior and he has medical devices implanted and that TSA should be cognizant of this. When he presents this letter, there are a very wide range of responses given back to him. Usually the TSA personnel thank him for his service and expedite his security screening. But other times the TSA personnel presents this is a challenge and makes him go to a private room for further body screening, sometimes even body cavity searching. Disgusting!
He told me another story. His daughter is a skeet shooter and he went to Academy Sports right before Christmas to buy her a new shotgun. Well, the firearms check for him failed! The clerk at the counter cannot tell him why, after all his job is to phone in the potential buyer’s information and then is given a yes or no as to whether that person can purchase the weapon. My podiatrist left the store without the shotgun. It took him a while but he actually found out that the Veterans Administration had put an entry into the Federal Firearm Database that prevented him from buying a weapon due to his head injury. He was never informed about this; some bureaucrat, perhaps one whose sole job was to enter data from records into various databases, just did it.
He fought them. Maybe due to his rank while he served, or being well-known in the medical community worldwide, he had enough clout to make them remove that record. But he tells me in all of his efforts to get this corrected he found that this was happening thousands of combat veterans who served in battle in Iraq or Afghanistan. They did not have the clout or pull to get their records fixed. To this day, they are banned from owning or purchasing any firearm.
Many veterans in the United States, upon going to civilian life, will get a job as a police officer, in law enforcement, or security of some kind that may require a firearm. One would think that such veterans would be ideal for this type of work. I can say from my experience as a retired military person, that in almost every case such veterans have the temperament and judgment for such duties, and it would be wise to hire them to do these jobs. I believe they would be less incidences of indiscriminate police shootings and police brutality if such individuals were hired. Yet here we are with someone who took it on the head for their country and are now made second-class citizens for this. Truly a travesty of justice.
Another major issue in this regard is veterans who are diagnosed with having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. Many of them also get reported from the Veterans Administration to the Federal Firearms Database. The outcome is the same. They cannot seek employment where the job duties require firearms nor can they simply purchase them as a gift for their daughter skeet shooter. That’s just the way the government rolls.
Over the past several years this country has gone through a lot of debate about gun control, mass shootings and individual rights. Many of the gun rights advocates will say that is not the gun that is the problem but rather the person. And if we just kept violent people, crazy people, people with proven mental deficiencies and others from being able to purchase or own weapons, we would have a drastic decrease in mass shootings and other gun violence. I think most reasonable people would agree with this. It makes sense. However, I am certain that most people would not put combat veterans in this category. But how does a bureaucracy make that distinction? They have rules – – people must fit categories – – and this one applies even to them. That’s got to change. The Veterans Administration needs to stop putting wounded warriors, and I believe PTSD is a wound as much as any physical wound, into the Federal Firearms Database.
It seems to me that combat veterans are screwed over twice. First, by the initial injury/trauma that occurred and then later by the Veterans Administration deciding to pigeonhole these people into a category of the insane, mentally incompetent, or not worthy of trust. Many who have obvious signs of PTSD do not seek treatment because they’ve heard these stories, too. They might spend years—or even the rest of their lives—without treatment and they, their spouses and the children might suffer for it. I’ve talked this over with many people.
I have found that many people on the political Left will remark that this really is not such a big deal because it is better to have survived and get treatment than to own a gun. This is callously shallow. You’ve got to understand that something as simple as being able to purchase a gun would and can be the only reason so many with PTSD do not report it or seek treatment. The type of person who joins the military is very often one who enjoys the responsible use of firearms, and even becomes an expert on them. To forever ban them from something they enjoy, from the application of the knowledge that they get, is very wrong.