I'm from Stanford b*tch

Can anyone explain what being from Stanford has to do with the point he is making?

To the Editor:

Re “For Therapists in the Military, Painful Stories” (front page, Nov. 8):

It is striking to me as a trauma psychiatrist how much you focused on what was in Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s head and not on what was in his hands. He got onto a secure military base with two highly lethal civilian handguns, one of which could fire a bullet a second without reloading.

Our nation is infected with an epidemic of firearms, almost one for every person in the country. When you mix that many high-powered weapons with people, bad things will happen, like drinking and driving.

While Major Hasan may have suffered some secondary traumatization from listening to patients, he had not even been to a combat zone, and as your article concluded: “There are a lot of others who are worse off than him.”

Post-traumatic stress disorder doesn’t kill people. Guns kill people.

David Spiegel
Stanford, Calif., Nov. 8, 2009

The writer is associate chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine.