The New York Times reported that there are many of similar cases linked with combat trauma and the stress of deployment.
The report has logged 349 cases of homicides involving all active-duty military personnel and new veterans since the beginning of the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. According to the research conducted by the newspaper, three-quarters of the cases involve veterans who are still in the military and more than half of the killings involve guns.
About a third of the victims were related and close to the veterans who committed the crimes.
"When they've been in combat, you have to suspect immediately that combat has had some effect, especially with people who haven't shown these tendencies in the past," Robert Jay Lifton, a lecturer in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance, told The New York Times.
Dr. Lifton used to manage several "rap groups" for Vietnam veterans and struggled to gain recognition for letting the world know about the post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
"Everything is multicausational, of course," Dr. Lifton added. "But combat, especially in a counterinsurgency war, is such a powerful experience that to discount it would be artificial."
The Pentagon as well as the Justice Department doesn't keep a track of such killings even though most of them are persecuted by civilian courts.
The newspaper used other local and community newspapers to compile the information regarding the convicted personnel after the wars started.
