The care of veterans continues to be one of the chief concerns for the U.S. government.
While running for the office of U.S. senator, California Attorney General Kamala Harris promised voters she would “clean up” the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
In fact, during the campaign, Harris tweeted, “22 veterans take their own lives each day.”
PolitiFact Florida heard the claim and put to their Truth-O-Meter. It received a MOSTLY TRUE rating.
Writer Josh Gillin said the statement steams from a VA study performed in 2012. It sampled about 20 states from 1999 to 2011.
“It came with a lot of caveats there: how the states were sampled, how it was factoring in the range here,” Gillin said. “What it said was 18 to 22 veterans per day, unfortunately, commit suicide."
It was for that reason, PolitiFact Florida rated the claim MOSTLY TRUE.
SOURCES: 20 veteran suicides every day, CA attorney general says
- Kamala Harris, tweet, August 18, 2016
- Kamala Harris, campaign website, accessed August 2016
- Interview, Nathan Click, Kamala Harris campaign spokesman, August 22, 2016
- Department of Veterans Affairs, "Suicide data report," 2012
- Department of Veterans Affairs, "VA conducts nation’s largest analysis of Veteran suicide," July 7, 2016
- Department of Veterans Affairs, "Facts about veterans suicide," July 2016.
- PolitiFact Virginia, Donald Trump says average of 20 veterans commit suicide daily, July 14, 2016
- ABC News, VA Releases Results of Largest Analysis of Veteran Suicide Rates, July 7, 2016
- Washington Post Fact Checker, The missing context behind the widely cited statistic that there are 22 veteran suicides a day, February 4, 2015
- Loretta Sanchez speech, YouTube video, posted November 4, 2015