“Robert Card had evidence of traumatic brain injury. In the white matter, the nerve fibers that allow for communication between different areas of the brain, there was significant degeneration, axonal and myelin loss, inflammation, and small blood vessel injury,” lead author Ann McKee said in a statement issued by the family and the Concussion Legacy Foundation.
The family apologized for the attack and said they hoped that publicizing the findings of the scan might help “prevent future tragedies.”
The findings align with previous studies on the effects of blast injuries, McKee said. Card was a firearms instructor and worked at an Army hand grenade training range, where he may have been exposed to thousands of blasts, the statement said.
“While I cannot say with certainty that these pathological findings underlie Mr. Card’s behavioral changes in the last 10 months of life, based on our previous work, brain injury likely played a role in his symptoms,” she continued.
e; on the subject of soldiers getting TBIs from blasts during training, it’s still a big problem as of November 2023
Special Operations troops were training with rocket launchers again.
Each operator held a launch tube on his shoulder, a few inches from his head, then took aim and sent a rocket flying at 500 miles an hour. And each launch sent a shock wave whipping through every cell in the operator’s brain.
For generations, the military assumed that this kind of blast exposure was safe, even as evidence mounted that repetitive blasts may do serious and lasting harm.
In recent years, Congress, pressed by veterans who were exposed to these shock waves, has ordered the military to set safety limits and start tracking troops’ exposure. In response, the Pentagon created a sprawling Warfighter Brain Health Initiative to study the issue, gather data and propose corrective strategies. And last year, for the first time, it set a threshold above which a weapon blast is considered hazardous.
Despite the order, though, things have hardly changed on the ground. Training continues largely as it did before. Troops say they see little being done to limit or track blast exposure. And weapons like shoulder-fired rockets that are known to deliver a shock wave well above the safety threshold are still in wide use.
The disconnect fits a pattern that has repeated for more than a decade: Top leaders talk of the importance of protecting troops’ brains, but the military fails to take practical steps to ensure safety.
Comprehensive mental healthcare would work to alleviate so many problems from homelessness to things like this. I can tell you from expirence in the field that unhoused people + housing + mental healthcare = someone who’s very likely to never be homeless again. There are countless other problems this would help too. In a country where everything needs fixing, it would be a great start.
Publicizing the findings will help how?
There’s a lot of people standing in the way of any mental examination determining whether or not someone gets to have access to a gun. There’s a lot of people standing in the way of restricting anyone’s access to guns, period.
They’re perfectly fine with the switch from law abiding gun owner to mass shooter and never exploring what could have been done to prevent it. Namely making sure some people get their guns taken away or don’t get them at all.
Does anyone know what type of shockwaves leads to these kinds of damages? I was both in the infantry and a part time fireworks technician who would always get as close to the booms as possible.
I don’t think there’s a specific kind. All of them are not good for the brain.
What’s the point of this, are we going to ban traumatic brain injuries now? What about accidental situations without a root cause? Let’s go sue fate and subpoena it. Maybe a witch hunt against people with brain injuries too 🙄 Anything to avoid being open and honest that casual gun ownership per perceived right to own weaponry will result in shooting deaths
Actions can be made to limit or improve activities that are likely to lead to TBIs. In this specific instance, it sounds like shoulder mounted rockets shouldn’t be used extensively in training. Reminds me of the effort to limit lead exposure which has resulted in lower rates of violent crime. All root causes of violent crime should be studied and addressed where possible.
