TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

Suicide among members of the U.S. armed forces is so grimly pervasive that the number of men and women in uniform who take their own lives is now roughly equal to the number killed in action. Each branch of service maintains a suicide-prevention office, and the Pentagon conducts an ongoing evaluation of causes and intervention strategies. And yet one U.S. facility alone, the Army's Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, has seen 30 soldier suicides in the past three years, including 12 in 2011.

Military suicides most often occur among enlisted men enduring the often-difficult transition from battlefield stress to home front. Relationship breakdowns, financial problems, substance abuse, tensions with other members of their unit -- something that seems insurmountable interferes with that transition. And it breaks them.

None of that explains the tragedy of Lt. j.g. John Robert Reeves, the U.S. Navy pilot who apparently killed himself on Jan. 1 -- and, although police have stopped short of calling it a murder-suicide, pending further investigation, most likely was responsible for the deaths of three others, including David Reis, 25, and his sister Karen, 24, both from Bakersfield. Reeves and David Reis had shared a Coronado condo with a third young Navy pilot who wasn't present that night; all three were learning to fly the supersonic F/A-18 Hornet.

They were among the very best we can offer our country -- the steel-nerved Top Guns of American military dominance.

It's presumptuous to say we expect such men to be less likely to commit such acts as this, because it implies that the others, by virtue of their place within the military hierarchy, are somehow more vulnerable. But the fact is Navy pilots just don't end up this way -- and not just by some sort of birthright. By profile. By selection. By training.

Just to have been accepted into the Navy's fighter-jet program, they would have stood out among their peers. Then they would have been subjected to a battery of rigorous physical, psychological and background tests. In a perfect world, any psychological or emotional fragility would have been exposed. Except that it wasn't.

There are after-the-fact signs -- aren't there always? -- that Reeves may have had some issues. A touch of depression, a hint of inadequacy. But enough for the Navy to pull him out of a prestigious program he'd worked so hard to qualify for? After having already invested so much in him? It's hard to fault the Navy.

No, this tragedy has all the hallmarks of a much simpler, less exclusive set of circumstances: Alcohol, jealousy and the ready availability of guns.

Toxicology results won't be in for some time, but it's reasonable to guess that some in the group -- five total, including victim Matthew Christopher Saturley -- may have imbibed at the upscale bar where they had just celebrated New Year's Eve.

It's reasonable to guess there may have been some jealousy. Reeves may have fancied himself moving toward a relationship with Karen Reis; at some point, he drew a cartoon suggesting he felt misled about a possible romance with a roommate's sister.

And it's beyond question there were readily available firearms. Investigators say four handguns were found inside the Coronado residence. The Navy pilots were well protected against the possibility of criminal intruders -- and devastatingly vulnerable to criminal madness within the walls of their own home.

David Reis and his roommates were instruments of a great and honorable calling -- the high-tech hammers of U.S. foreign policy. But they appear to have died for the most ignoble of reasons, jealousy, and by way of the most common of killing tools, the ever-present American handgun. They -- and we -- deserved so much better.

Email Editorial Page Editor Robert Price at rprice@bakersfield.com.