Editing Ian David Long (section)

==Background==
Long served in the United States Marine Corps from August 2008 to March 2013, and had gone to Afghanistan from November 2010 to June 2011. After being discharged, he attended California State University, Northridge as an athletic training major from 2013 to 2016, but he did not graduate and ultimately decided that the field was not right for him, for reasons unknown.

He had been married from 2009 to 2011. They split up shortly before Long went to Afghanistan due to "irreconcilable differences." The divorce was finalized in May 2013.

While he was previously living with roommates in Reseda, Long was living with his mother at the time of the shooting. A cousin told the media that Long's father had died from cancer early in his life. His friends say that Long had been at the bar with them and some considered him a regular patron.

Police and a mental health crisis team visited Long in 2017 for his irate and irrational behavior, but they decided not to detain him at a psychiatric facility. A high school teacher raised claims that Long had physically assaulted her as a student but was encouraged to not push the incident to not endanger his future in the Marine Corps. In her statement, the teacher alleged that Long had issues long before his military service. Although he had served overseas in the military, behavioral scientist and clinical psychologist Lisa Jaycox said that it was premature to say whether Long suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or that it was a factor in the shooting.