US-DEFENSE-SUICIDE-HEALTH-SOCIETY

A worker at the Veterans Crisis Line in Canandaigua, New York answers a call from a veteran ion September 4, 2016. - Between 2008 and 2016, more than 6,000 veterans -- many of them gun-owners -- killed themselves each year, amounting to some 20 deaths a day, according to a report last year from the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The Veterans Crisis Line was launched in 2007 with a staff of 14; it now has more than 900 employees, with three call centers across the country, director Matt Miller told AFP. Forty years after the hell of Vietnam and 17 years after US troops first intervened in Afghanistan, "there is a lot more awareness" about veterans' needs, said Marcelle Leis, who heads the Dwyer Project after 20 years in the Air National Guard. (Photo by Geoff Robins / AFP) (Photo credit should read GEOFF ROBINS/AFP via Getty Images)