The mass murder in New Orleans and Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas fit a troubling pattern among U.S. vets, research says.

The two men who carried out apparent terror attacks on New Year’s Day — killing 15 people by plowing a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans, and detonating a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas — both had U.S. military backgrounds, according to the Pentagon.

From 1990 to 2010, about seven persons per year with U.S. military backgrounds committed extremist crimes. Since 2011, that number has jumped to almost 45 per year, according to data from a new, unreleased report shared with The Intercept by Michael Jensen, the research director at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland.

Military service is also the single strongest individual predictor of becoming a “mass casualty offender,” far outpacing mental health issues, according to a separate study of extremist mass casualty violence by the researchers.

  • @givesomefucksEnglish
    38•3 days ago

    Military service is also the single strongest individual predictor of becoming a “mass casualty offender,” far outpacing mental health issues,

    Far out pacing diagnosised mental health issues…

    I found out a friend had been talking to medical about suicidal thoughts for a month, but he didn’t tell anyone else. One day he told medical he bought a shotgun, they told him to wait two weeks and then to tell them if he was still thinking about.

    Because seeing a shrink would have taken him out of training, and if that happens too much it made the program look bad.

    Luckily he told me and some others, we took his gun and another buddy started staying on his couch for the next couple months.

    But if he had had shot up somewhere, he’d have had “no mental illness” because the military hides how common it is for lots of different reasons.

    That wasn’t rare either, SAD was the acronym for “suicidal and depressed” but no matter what, you weren’t pulled from training till you attempted. And it wasnt just the training, we had a guard blow his brains out at the flag pole, and they just hosed it down and moved the body. They didn’t tell students till we left because it would have been a “distraction”.

    So, long story short, we know what the problem is, and how to fix it. It’s even relatively easy.

    But recognizing this is an issue would result in a huge reduction of our most highly trained military members, because that’s where it’s most likely to be ignored until the last possible second.