Former FBI agent Jonathan Gilliam on Thursday told Fox News that fewer soldiers would be “ticking time bombs” if the United States would stop handing out money to immigrants “who do nothing to earn their citizenship” in the first place.

As the news was breaking that an Iraq veteran with mental issues had killed four people including himself at Fort Hood in Texas, Fox News host Sean Hannity turned to his panel to discuss post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

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“There is a ticking time bomb of mental health issues in our military,” security analyst K.T. McFarland explained. “Over one-third of veterans have friends who have committed suicide, half of all veterans have thought about suicide, two-thirds of veterans are not getting the mental health treatment that they feel they need.”

Hannity asked Gilliam if those statistics meant that there were “ticking time bombs on those bases.”

“Two things come to my mind immediately when I hear these statistics,” Gilliam opined. “One is a political thing and the other is a leadership problem.”

“The political thing is, why is it that we’re not spending more tax dollars on veterans and their families welfare than we are on the welfare for people in this country who do nothing to earn their citizenship?” he said. “Nothing!”

Gilliam added that the U.S. also made it too difficult for veterans to purchase firearms after returning from duty.

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The former FBI agent described himself as the “real deal” because he had been trained as a Navy SEAL, but complained that he had to follow the same rules as everyone else when qualifying for a concealed carry permit.

Hannity agreed: “It took me years, and I had been trained in the use of a firearm and a pistol since I was 11 years old. And it takes years and a lot of death threats.”

Watch the video below from Fox News’ Hannity, broadcast April 2, 2014.

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(h/t: Newshounds)