It is extremely challenging to get service members (and others) to get treatment for the symptoms of PTSD with the negative connotations people already heap atop mental illness, let alone with the insinuation that these people are somehow killers in waiting.

Ivan Lopez's killings at Fort Hood, while on a scale not often matched, are one more marker on a bloody trail of death that leads from Iraq and Afghanistan into the American heartland, to bases and backyards nationwide.

Whether the press is good or bad, if the officer is male, his gender is never in the headline. But if the officer is female, it is always part of the headline. And if a woman police officer performs both heroically and exactly as trained? Stop the presses!

Whenever a person with a mental disorder (or assumed to have a mental disorder), veteran or civilian, commits a violent act that makes headlines, there is a call to address the "mental health issue" in violent crimes. However, what is meant by the "mental health issue" is generally unclear. The fact is that killings and overall violence are extremely rare by people with serious mental illness.