Sound Off: Should Guardsmen and Reservists With Zero Active Duty Call Themselves Veterans? -...

MSG (Join to see) I have never met a person with 0 AD in the Guard or Reserve. Have served in both for over a decade in each. Every school and basic training is considered AD. We are the Guard and Reserve ready to answer our Nation's call. Period. I refuse to read the comments...

I will leave this here- for several years running after 9/11 over 60% of the Iowa Guard was activated and deployed somewhere. The AD could not survive a mission without these men and women performing theirs. Be it home station or abroad... all who serve are veterans.

I served 14+years active duty and 8 1/2 years Reserve.

Frankly the Reserve duty placed a greater burden on me and my family because it did not pay all of the bills and posed conflicts with the job that did.

Here is my take. If one served honorably in any part of our military. That person is indeed a Veteran.

What I believe is that anyone who served honorably in any component of any branch should be considered a veteran.

What Title 38 of the USC defined as veteran prior to this bill becoming law was, "The term 'veteran' means a person who served in the active military, naval, or air service, and who was discharged or released therefrom under conditions other than dishonorable."

When they say zero active duty, active duty for training does not count towards this. It only takes one day of Title 10 orders (excluding training) and a good characterization of service to qualify as a veteran under USC.

What the law states does not mean that you can't consider yourself a veteran. No one can take that away. As I said in my first sentence, I believe any who served honorably should be legally considered veterans.