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Senator Kirsten Gillibrand speaks at VFW Post 5350 in Westhampton Beach on Friday afternoon. DANA SHAW
VFW Post 5350 Commander William Hughes welcomes Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to the post in Westhampton Beach. DANA SHAW
Suffolk County Legislator Ed Romaine. DANA SHAW
Suffolk County Legislator Ann Welker. DANA SHAW
Suffolk County Legislator Ed Romaine with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. DANA SHAW
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand announced a new bipartisan bill to address traumatic brain injuries among active military members and veterans. The bill, called the Blast Overpressure Safety Act, will focus on curbing the risks of traumatic brain injuries from using weapons and experiencing blast overpressure from firing weapons, which occurs both in training and in combat at VFW Post 5350 in Westhampton Beach on Friday. DANA SHAW
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand chats with WWII veteran and VFW Post 5350 member and Judge Dominic Lodato after announcing a new bipartisan bill to address traumatic brain injuries among active military members and veterans. DANA SHAW
U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand announced a new bipartisan bill to address traumatic brain injuries among active military members and veterans during a visit to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 5350 in Westhampton Beach on Friday afternoon.
The bill, called the Blast Overpressure Safety Act, will focus on curbing the risks of traumatic brain injuries from using weapons and experiencing blast overpressure from firing weapons, which occurs both in training and in combat. Symptoms of these injuries that service members have to live with include hallucinations, lack of sleep and concentration, migraines and seizures.
Gillibrand said that this is an issue that has not been properly addressed or investigated by the Department of Defense.
“We’re not checking our service members to make sure they’re not being injured,” she said. “We’re not assessing the weapons to make sure they’re not causing these injuries. And we don’t have any protocols in place to research, to get the data [and] to make sure this isn’t happening again. So that’s what today’s legislation is about.”
The goal of the bill is to ensure that the Department of Defense will “enact better blast overpressure screening, tracking, prevention and treatment” to reduce the amount of traumatic brain injuries that come from weapons use. Components of the bill include improving data about the brain injuries that service members sustain, mandating regular neurocognitive assessments among service members and increasing transparency about blast overpressure safety data from weapons companies.
Gillibrand emphasized the importance of having more research being done on the blasts and associated injuries, especially from weapons manufacturers.
“The repeated nature of these blasts is what’s so destructive,” she said. “And so we just need a lot more science. We need the ammunition and the gun manufacturers to do much more research on what distance you need to be if you’re going to shoot one of these weapons. And it’s really, really essential that we do that now.”
Gillibrand, a member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, said that in addition to being a health risk, traumatic brain injuries resulting from blast overpressure also pose a national security risk as well since they occur in training.
“It’s also a risk to our national security because these service members are getting injured in the line of training and duty, and we don’t know when the injuries are going to start,” she said. “And so we are debilitating our service members just in how we’re training them. So this is a huge risk for our service long term.”
In conjunction with the bill, Gillibrand said that she sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office to request a review of the Department of Defense’s efforts regarding traumatic brain injuries and blast overpressure exposure.
Bill Hughes, post commander of Post 5350, said that the bill will help with an issue that “has been going on for decades and for as long as there has been war,” and declared his post’s support for the bill.
“It’s very important legislation,” he said. “This has been endorsed by the Veterans of Foreign Wars at the national level. So we in our district in Suffolk County and our post absolutely endorse and support this legislation.”
The bill has received bipartisan support from members of both houses of Congress. In the House of Representatives, the bill was introduced by Representatives Ro Khanna of California and Elise Stefanik of New York. In the Senate, the bill was introduced by senators Joni Ernst of Iowa and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, with Gillibrand as a co-sponsor.
Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine spoke of his support for the bill at the VFW, calling it “a good piece of legislation that everyone, regardless of political party, can get behind.”
“This is a common sense, nonpartisan piece of legislation that has one purpose: to protect those who serve our nation,” he said. “And they should be entitled to that protection, particularly when studies have shown that these blasts affect the human brain.”
Suffolk County Legislator Ann Welker also voiced her support for the bill, citing the experiences of her two brothers, one who served in the U.S. Marines during the Gulf War and another who suffered a traumatic brain injury.
“The Blast Overpressure Safety Act is focused on mitigating and protecting members for blast overpressure and for TBIs,” she said. “I applaud and fully support the work of Senator Gillibrand on this critically important issue.”
