President Donald Trump, speaking to reporters on Friday morning, said that the Thousand Oaks gunman who shot and killed 12 people and injured at least 20 others at a bar Wednesday night was a “sick puppy.”
“He was a war veteran, he was a Marine, he was in the war,” Trump said. “He saw some pretty bad things. And a lot of people say he had the PTSD, that’s a tough deal.”
Trump’s comments risked reinforcing a stereotype that military veterans, advocacy groups and mental-health professionals have struggled for decades to overcome: that veterans with PTSD are ticking time bombs, susceptible to committing violent crimes. We’re asking readers to share the types of connections they see people make between violence and service-connected PTSD and what ways they challenge that narrative.