A suicide prevention committee that was established by the Pentagon last year is recommending instituting a waiting period for gun purchases on bases and raising the minimum age for buying firearms in an attempt to reduce the number of suicides among service members.
The Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee (SPRIRC) announced the suggested measures as part of a broader set of 127 recommendations to reverse the current trend of suicides in the military, which has steadily increased over the last 15 years.
The committee recommended putting in place a seven day waiting period for gun purchases on Defense Department facilities and a four day waiting period for ammunition purchases.
The committee was created by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in May 2022 to review the Department of Defense’s ongoing suicide prevention efforts. The committee submitted a first set of 10 recommendations to Austin in December before submitting its latest report.
Dr. Craig Bryan, one of the members of the committee, said a high percentage of suicides on base involved guns purchased at base military exchanges.
“There’s a very strong scientific basis showing that waiting period, even as short as seven days, significantly reduce suicide rates,” said Bryan, a lethal means safety expert, in urging the Defense Department to “follow the science.”
The committee also recommended raising the minimum age to purchase weapons on base to 25 years old.
“There’s arguably only one thing that all researchers agree on,” said Bryan, “and that one thing is that taking steps to slow down convenient access to highly lethal methods like firearms is the single most effective strategy for saving lives.”
According to the Defense Department’s annual report, 519 service members died by suicide in 2021, the most recent number for…
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