Not sure who made that claim, do you have a cite?
Here’s is another study.
Recommendation 2 specifically mentions risk to grenade range trainers.
Another.
Every article after the incident that implied he was a highly trained weapons instructor for the Army.
I think this article wasn’t about that, just that he may have suffered brain damage that led to him going nuts.
Brain damage from repetitive bouncing around in the skull, even at levels below what causes a concussion, are now pretty well documented. (Although at this time they can only be accurately diagnosed by autopsy.) And “weird irrational violent behavior” is a not-too-uncommon result. It’s a major problem in American football. It may well be a problem with soldiers exposed to to many blasts.
I will have to bow to the science if it proves true but all your cites are not equal. Just like all blasts are not equal. I have been on tank ranges both in and out of the tank when they go off. I’ve been on demo ranges with 100s of pounds of C4. I’ve been at the minimum safe distance from a pound of C4 breaching charge behind a breaching blanket. And yes I’ve been on grenade ranges. With absolutely no exaggeration I’ve been exposed to much more concussive force at a July 4th BBQ than on a grenade range. Many times more. Your later cites talk about firing Carl Gustavs and artillery pieces. That’s entirely different. The operators of those weapons are in the middle of the concussive force. I’ve never personally fired the Carl Gustav but I know the concussion of the launch is right near the head.
They are sending brain samples to be tested so in this case there can be some evidence if there is a connection. At least some good might come out of this. Or it may be unrelated. Time will tell.
You’re seem really invested in that narrative and claiming he wasn’t an instructor. He was, which may have caused him to suffer from CTE, which may have contributed to his erratic behavior.
Moderating:
Please comment on the content and not on the commentator.
There is little doubt about the effects of TBI. The issue is how low a level of blast can cause it.
The three main components of a blast are shrapnel, heat and rapid overpressure. If he was close enough to get hit with shrapnel or heat he would have had more timely injuries to worry about. So the issue is the effect on a low level of rapid overpressure. The over pressure from 6ozs of Comp B explosive isn’t that great. Some of the cites provided by MM ask for more studies of repeated exposure of low levels.
That’s good. It can be diagnosed from brain samples. I’ve seen photos, and it’s surprisingly obvious. (At least in the cases i saw.) You don’t need to be a trained professional to look at the slice of normal brain, of brain affected by CTE, and of brain affected by Alzheimer’s, and see that they look really different. A good brain sample will answer the question of whether CTE is present.
Others may not remember earlier discussions in this thread since it was a while ago. That part of my comment wasn’t about that article but more about the previous discussion about the media coverage.
Okay, I’m going to check something from your last post @madmonk28 because it seems to be insinuating things no one is saying as far as I can tell.
AFAIK, most people are going back and forth about this because of the original reports that he was a firearms / tactical instructor. If he is/was an instructor on a grenade range, or a private firearms instructor, that’s a very different kettle of fish from being an 80s style action-hero instructor who is a tactical murder machine.
As @loach themselves said:
As for the possible CTE connection, I’m with most posters, seems plausible at first glance, especially if he was involved in multiple stupid, human error accidents, but the mechanism is supposed rather than proven. Which is why I, and apparently most other posters in the thread are glad it’s being checked.
But for all I know at this point, he -could- have had CTE from playing football all during his youth. Or maybe took ‘head banging’ too literally all through the 80s. (Yes, I’m being deliberately silly to make a point) Anyway, getting as much good, accurate information as possible is important, because if our current training is putting people at risk, we need to correct it.
If there was another cause, it’s possibly less important in the overall scheme of things, but still very important to all those who lost friends and family and want some closure.
So let’s none of us assume the answer until we have a more complete investigation. And lacking such, I’ll listen to @Loach’s informed experience as perhaps more reliable than modern click-bait based reporting, but even they acknowledge
I’m not moderating cause I can’t in this case. I just want to note for @puzzlegal I saw the symbol showing you were working on this post when she made her note.
Or that you will throw it forward and a reasonable distance down range. You may have noticed a pause to see the recruit is using proper form.
Yes.
Something must be a little complicated about this. This article says the samples are being sent to Boston University which has the largest CTE brain bank and that it may take 6 months for the report to come out.
I’ll post the wiki article on hand grenades. There is a picture of the M69 practice grenade. The grenade shells are not controlled. Units can have them in a closet. They are just hollow balls of steel with the same weight and size of a live grenade. You can have soldiers train on throwing them properly anywhere. The fuse and explosive simulator is more controlled. You have to draw them from an ammo supply area even though it’s only the equivalent of a firecracker. You generally don’t throw them on a live range because it takes up time. They did it in the video because you can’t have anyone extra in the pit for safety reasons during a live throw and they wanted to film close ups. During training there is usually an area set up to throw the simulator and give each soldier enough time to be comfortable throwing it. The blast in the simulator really is negligible. To demonstrate it an instructor usually pulls the pin and holds the dummy grenade until it pops. It’s not strong enough to even sting. You will get burned if you put your hand over the hole.
He shot himself in the head. I’m sure that makes it much harder to diagnose any possible pre-death damage to his brain.
The photos i saw were slices taken from a whole brain. (As part of continuing professional education as an actuary – CTE is a scary emerging liability topic.) The damage showed up in large, macroscopic changes, like, bands of tissue took stain differently than normal tissue. I have no idea how you would even examine a brain that had been scrambled by a bullet.
Yes I was wondering about the gunshot. I didn’t remember how he did it or even if I ever saw how he did it. Several football players (Junior Seau and Dave Duerson at least) shot themselves in the chest so their brains could be examined.
I hope it’s okay to resurrect this with this update:
Seems like the police were terrified of a guy with mental health problems reacting badly to them trying to take away his guns, or indeed even really checking in on him. They didn’t even want it known that they were checking in on him.