Ron Paul Has a Bad Diagnosis for the Chris Kyle Killing

Ron Paul may be be a doctor, but just because he's an outspoken, politically inclined OB-GYN doesn't mean he know what he's talking about when it comes to the latest emotional — and deadly — case of PTSD. Famed former U.S. sniper Chris Kyle was killed over the weekend at a Texas shooting range by a former Marine he was helping deal with PTSD; Eddie Routh, an Iraq war veteran, is now facing capitol murder and murder charges for killing Kyle and another man, Chris Littlefield. But for whatever reason, Paul felt the need to weigh in with this comment on Twitter today: 

And, well, people have unsurprisingly taken Paul to task for being shortsighted: 

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While  it should be noted that conservative blogger types don't always agree with Paul in the first place, there remain some on the right who are flogging Paul for his ignorance:

And some expressed their disgust with simpler language: 

Ron Paul is, to put it plainly, flatly wrong in his assertion that "treating" someone with PTSD at a shooting range is a bad idea. First of all, not everyone with PTSD is a dangerous threat to your life. But, further to the point, Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PET) is one of the leading ways to treat PTSD, as one commenter pointed out to Paul. It's even endorsed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. They call it "one of the most effective treatments" of PTSD. 

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"This therapy works by helping you approach trauma-related thoughts, feelings, and situations that you have been avoiding due to the distress they cause. Repeated exposure to these thoughts, feelings, and situations helps reduce the power they have to cause distress," their website explains. 

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What Kyle was practicing was a type of PET called "vivo exposure": 

So, the same way that getting back behind the wheel might help someone who was a victim of a roadside bomb, going to a shooting range could be a method of PET that would have (in theory) helped Routh deal with whatever he was going through.