Thank You for Your Service” As America Ignores Its Veterans’ Mental Health Crisis With Blissful Ignorance
True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews
Tony Brueski
4.2 • 612 Ratings
🗓️ 1 October 2025
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We say it like a reflex.
"Thank you for your service."
But when veterans come home from war mentally broken — and become the ones pulling the trigger in mass shootings, or turning the gun on themselves — our country looks the other way.
In this extended breakdown, we dive into two recent mass shootings committed by combat veterans, one at a church in Michigan, the other at a bar in North Carolina. The headlines said they were isolated tragedies. The truth? They're part of a disturbing pattern we rarely acknowledge.
🔺 Veterans make up 6% of the U.S. population, but 26% of mass shooters.
🔺 In 2022, 6,392 veterans died by suicide — nearly three-quarters using a firearm.
🔺 The VA reports over 4,400 severe staff shortages, with psychologists in highest demand.
This isn’t about dishonoring service. It’s about confronting the deadly consequences of neglecting mental health, ignoring red flags, and refusing to talk about veteran perpetrators because it makes us uncomfortable.
We don’t stop to ask:
– Why are so many veteran shooters known to law enforcement before the violence?
– Why is the VA failing to provide timely, consistent mental health care?
– Why do we thank veterans for their service, then fail them in crisis?
This segment is a call for accountability — not just for the shooters, but for the institutions that looked away. If we want fewer headlines like these, we need more than symbolic patriotism. We need real help, real care, and real conversations about who we’re losing — and what it costs when we stay silent.
🔗 Veterans Crisis Line: Dial 988, then press 1 | Text: 838255 | Chat: veteranscrisisline.net
Hashtags
#Veterans #MassShootings #GunViolence #MentalHealth #VAHealthcare #PTSD #VeteranSuicide #HiddenKillers #TrueCrimeNews #AmericaFailsVets
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers with Tony Bruske. |
| 0:03.5 | Here now, Tony Brewski. |
| 0:07.2 | We love to say it. |
| 0:09.6 | Thank you for your service. |
| 0:11.5 | And it's a right thing to say. |
| 0:13.0 | It's a good thing to say. |
| 0:15.0 | And I want to say this off the bat on this piece. |
| 0:18.9 | This is in no way a hit piece or a piece to dentegrate anything against |
| 0:25.1 | our brave men and women and our veterans in the United States. Not at all. This is a piece |
| 0:30.7 | that we need to hear because you guys deserve the attention and the care and the help and everything that you went and put your |
| 0:41.3 | life on the line for by signing up to be in our armed services. You deserve better than what |
| 0:48.4 | you're getting. And I think you already know that. But I don't know that a lot of the folks who |
| 0:53.8 | didn't serve do know that. But I don't know that a lot of the folks who didn't serve do know that. |
| 0:56.9 | They like to hide and say, thank you for your service. |
| 1:00.3 | And then be blissfully ignorant on how few services you're actually offered after you're subjected to mental hell. |
| 1:18.0 | That's what this is about. |
| 1:20.2 | I want to get that right away established and off the bat so nobody can go, |
| 1:26.0 | why are you, I'm not, I am not attacking any, |
| 1:29.1 | anyone. |
| 1:30.1 | I am attacking a system that likes to wave flags really big and act all patriotic, but then when it |
| 1:38.5 | comes back to actually helping and taking care of our brave men and women, it's like, well, |
| 1:46.0 | you got to go recruit over here. |
... |
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