Legislation

A new report from the Defense Department is likely to revive debate over the prospect of using "means restriction" -- limiting access to firearms -- as a way to reduce the number of suicides among U.S. troops.

According to a DoD report on military suicides in 2017 released Wednesday, two-thirds of suicides among active-duty personnel that year were by firearm, a statistic consistent with the previous five years.

Of the 309 suicides among active-duty troops in 2017, firearms played a role in 202 deaths. Most were privately owned guns, not service weapons.

A law signed by President Donald Trump on June 25 to provide compensation to ill veterans who served on Navy ships in Vietnam also made several changes to Department of Veterans Affairs-backed home loans for all eligible veterans.

The “blue water” Vietnam veterans benefits act is now law.

Late Tuesday night, President Donald Trump signed the legislation, which grants presumptive status for disability benefits to an estimated 90,000 Navy veterans who served in the seas around Vietnam during the war.

Unlike their fellow service members stationed on the ground and on inland waterways, those veterans faced additional paperwork barriers to prove exposure to toxic defoliants during their deployments, even after developing identical serious cancers and respiratory illnesses.

Federal suicide prevention efforts in coming months will include increased focus on veterans’ access to firearms, Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie said during a Capitol Hill appearance Wednesday.

“It is key,” he said during a Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on his department’s recent efforts to address the problem. “Seventy percent of veterans who (die by suicide) do so with firearms. We’re dealing with a population that has a special familiarity with firearms. So we’re working on ways to build time and space … between thoughts and impulsive acts.”