Shooter, Wade Page, was Army vet, white supremacist

[MADem]

83. Gay people commonly got "general" discharges....if the commander authorizing the discharge was not

a total asshole. If they were total assholes, they doled out OTH's. During DADT, self-reporters frequently got Honorable discharges, but that's not to say there weren't plenty of jerks who tried to maximize the "punishment" for reasons they probably couldn't adequately explain to themselves if they thought about it.

As you note, the whole "fitness" thing is why it's difficult to be definitive about general discharges. There's something there that caused the discharged individual to "not fit in," but it's not always nefarious--though it can be.

Sometimes, like with this guy, it's a simple "pattern of misconduct"--e.g. a little shit just kept getting into trouble, became a personnel/security clearance problem due to issues of unreliability--like being drunk on duty; other times, it's medical/psychiatric--not the person's fault, but they're causing trouble as a result of their illness, so while the illness is a factor in mitigation, they've engaged in behaviors that were contrary to good order/discipline or caused them to not be able to do their job and affected unit readiness; and other times, before changes to the regs accrued, it was simply for the "crime" of being gay in uniform.

I'm guessing this discharge was fairly straightforward--problem child, getting into scrapes, perhaps even given a few chances by soft-hearted supervisors, and then, patience exhausted/enough is enough. Busted and dumped.

I would not be at all surprised if the unit's mandated end strength constraints made the whole process quite logical--why keep the dregs when you're having to make those painful "Reduction in Force" manpower decisions? Get rid of the little assholes who are discipline/paperwork/management nightmares, and keep the good kids.