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Joe,
Two days ago, I may have agreed with you...I read this article a week or two ago...then yesterday at the Cheektowaga gun show I bought a Belgian 20ga and overheard all the complaining at the NIC station, but I don't know why this veteran was declined.

What I do know, is that the VA adjudication process couldn't be more flawed...there used to be "Adjudication Board(s)" set up to determine disability claims when injured veterans return. These boards were made up of 3 doctors, who were charged with reviewing the disability claims of veterans. According to the Veterans Law Reporter, these boards were reduced to one doctor, but that was not the point of the case. The point was that some whistle blower had supplied evidence that the adjudicating doctors had been receiving cash bonuses for maintaining an 80% denial and remand rate.
You can argue for the way the Dept. of Veterans Affairs handles the treatment of our nations veterans. Sometime in the late 90s the number of Viet Nam combat veterans that commited suicide exeeded the number that died "in country" and already the news is beginning to report some startling numbers of Iraq combat veterans who committed suicide in 2006 alone. According to CBS News, 120 per week in 2006. 10 bucks says that your 4 star friend doesn't receive equal medical benifits as you're PFC colleague (somehow you don't strike me as his friend)

I also know that this past summer there was a local news flash that several police agencies were involved in some sort of "stand off" with a "despondent" Iraq war veteran. Dozens of police with 4 wheel motorcycle support had a large area near Eden NY surrounded a vast track of land where an armed veteran was believed to be holed up. The manhunt ended peacefully and it was learned that the guy was unarmed and had simply entered the woods of his boyhood upon returning home to recollect his thoughts. According to the local news broadcasters, he was arrested and put in a padded cell type setting at the Buffalo VA hospital just to be sure.

It's in the TV news, it's already happening at gun shows, it's in the newspapers...our vets are once again committing suicide at an alarming rate (over 6000 per year)...how could I ever I contest your point's now that you've labeled the veterans perspective as "a little nutty" ...perhaps you would have a different perspective if veterans were your sons or daughters...or yourself.

Oh gosh your right Robert. How could I possibly argue with something overheard at a gunshow.

Why don't you actually read your own "evidence" and reread what I put in my posting.

And by the way, I personally get delayed everytime I buy a gun. It could be I am a borderline crazy secretly targetted by a gun grabbing Department of Veteran Affairs determined to disarm every American Veteran or let's see, it could be I have had my background "hit" about a gazillion times because I have every clearence known to man.

Again, my informed opinion is that the overwhelmingly vast majority of veterans will assimilate just fine back into society and the shooting sports. A very, very, very small number who exhibit a real danger to themselves or others will be listed just like their civilian counterparts. And as someone who is just up the road from VT, that is not a bad thing.

Rest easy, sleep well my brothers.
Know the line has held, your job is done.
Rest easy, sleep well.
Others have taken up where you fell, the line has held.
Peace, peace, and farewell...



Readers may be interested to know that these wreaths -- (some 5,000 originally - now 10,000 to Arlington and 5,000 for 286 other veterans' cemeteries, - 70 wreaths were sent to soldiers in Iraq, accompanied by cards handmade by Harrington schoolchildren) -- are donated by the Worcester Wreath Co. of Harrington , Maine. The owner, Merrill Worcester, not only provides the wreaths, but covers the trucking expense as well. He's done this since 1992. A wonderful guy.
Also, most years, groups of Maine school kids combine an educational trip to DC with this event to help out. Making this even more remarkable is the fact that Harrington is in one the poorest parts of the state.

It begins with a hand-made wreath, but Worcester Wreath President Morrill Worcester is quick to remind everyone who will listen, that "it takes a lot of hands and a lot of hearts to make this happen each year. It is our way of giving something back, because without the sacrifices of our Veterans, and their families, we wouldn't be in a position to do any of this."

With trepidation and no regrets, poking my nose in again on a significant day in American history---December 7, 1941: the response to the attack was pure retaliation, vindication, not from ideological notions of fighting a fascist menace in Europe or Japan. U.S. was mostly isolationist at the time.

I can't visit war monuments or cemeteries unless they are very old. It's because I do remember and read and write of military history. My wife and I were close last year to Vimy Ridge in northern France, and the Normandy beaches, but they're too much for me now; they bring too many tears.

I can't visit the Dutch village where my father parachuted when his RCAF bomber was shot down en route to Hamburg barely six months after America entered the war. His crew---Bob Whytox, 19 of Montreal, and Williams and Worthington, both of Great Britain---are buried there. I allow memory of them to stoke my activism.

It seems the only way to serve their sacrifices now.

Wow, King Brown,

I salute your resolve and your carefully thought out words."I allow memory of them to stoke my activism.It seems the only way to serve their sacrifices now.".

Activism, in my opinion, begins with speaking out about the tragic injustices our nations vets receive upon returning back to civilian life. I also volunteer work, food, and money to the locl homeless vet population, fortunately the competition is strong and we have only about 10 living mostly on Canadian railroad property that extends over the border into the US.

I don't know a better way to live up to the obligations of my generation of veterans than your words, I wish I knew your real name so that I could give proper credit when repeating them. And I will repeat them...as a first step for all veterans who don't know where to begin to respond to the words of Tom Holmann, "Never again will one generation of veterans abandon another."

"With trepidation and no regrets, poking my nose in again on a significant day in American history---December 7, 1941: the response to the attack was pure retaliation, vindication, not from ideological notions of fighting a fascist menace in Europe or Japan. U.S. was mostly isolationist at the time. "

King you are damn right it was retaliation, is that a bad thing when you are attacked by someone who wants to kill you? your liberal bias is showing again. you are however right that you are poking your nose into something you have no right to speak to. what goes thru your head to get you to make a statement like that?

Devrep, I attached no opprobrium to retaliation in war, only addressed an earlier post implying America went to war to fight fascism.

We fought as an Anglo-American alliance, with General George Marshall---whom Churchill called "the organizer of Victory"---and General Dwight Eisenhower as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces.

Canadians were brothers-in-arms with Americans in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and Northwest Europe to victory. To say I or any other person has no right to comment on the war is birthplace chauvinism.

Two of my friends won Military Crosses with the Honourable Artillery Company and 15/16 Lancers trying to prevent a disaster at the American defeat at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia in February 1943.

Canadians received a Presidential Citation from your Commander-in-Chief for their competence and leadership with U.S. Special Forces currently fighting in Afghanistan. Let's not diminish our friendship.

Robert, your newspaper article is interesting . . . but it doesn't say anything about the federal list of those mentally disqualified from buying guns having increased because a whole bunch of vets have been added. It was known before the VA Tech tragedy that reporting of those judged to be mentally disqualified was lagging badly--unlike reporting of felons, which is pretty accurate and up to date. Obviously, following the VA Tech shooting, the states would make significant efforts to make sure the mentally incompetent are reported and added to the federal data base--as they always should have been.

King, it would probably be more accurate to say that there was a significant split in the US population over isolationism versus support of, if not direct involvement in, the war against fascism. FDR himself was certainly in the latter group. Lend-Lease made that clear, and could have been regarded by Germany as an act of war. And the United States had restarted the draft and was mobilizing Reserve forces long before Pearl Harbor. The tank battalion that covered the retreat onto the Bataan Peninsula was a Minnesota National Guard unit that had been activated in 1940, and had been in the Philippines since about February 1941.

Larry,
Fortunately the Tennesee Gun Owners association is trying to address the problem (that doesn't exist acording to some)...

I'm not trying to sling mud, I'm trying to to live up to the VVA campaign slogan "never again will one generation of veterans abandon another" in any way that I can...I'm thankful to KingBrown for making my direction a little more clear. What he said is one of the most patriotic strategies I've ever heard and I plan to share his views at the next VVA meeting that I attend...

King, These stark memories are palliated by the news that the day after "The Day that will Live in Infamy" , that is December 8, 2007 saw the birth of my first grandchild, a bonnie wee lass. She is known as Baby Lamb as she doesn't have a first name yet. I am 70 years old and I well remember the attack on Pearl Harbor as it was the week my younger twin brothers were born. David