There’s a PSA video online that’s powerful in its seeming dichotomy: In it, a middle-aged man wearing safety glasses and earphones is firing a handgun at a shooting range. Then he stops, removes the glasses and headphones, and speaks directly to the camera.
“Last year I was at my lowest. Going through a pretty serious depression,” he says. “Couple friends of mine stopped by my house and said they were worried about me. Said they would feel a lot better if they could hold onto my firearms till things turned around.” Then he adds, “I think they saved my life.”
The moment, courtesy of the Utah Suicide Prevention Coalition, is truly compelling, a reminder that while discussions of guns and policy almost always break down into contentious debates, there’s one subtopic on which all sides can seemingly agree: the relationship between firearms and suicide, and the great need to understand how gun safety and suicide awareness could save a person’s life.
“Reducing a suicidal person’s access to something that can easily kill them is the low-hanging fruit — it’s the easy stuff, helping them bide a bit more time,” says Catherine Barber, senior researcher and director of Means Matter, a project of the Harvard School of Public Health and result of a now-classic survey that found higher suicide rates in states where guns were prevalent.
As September is National Suicide Prevention Month, with National Suicide Prevention Week lasting through Sept. 14 — and as there are ongoing discussions of both state and nationwide “red flag” gun laws, which are heavily aimed at protecting unstable gun owners from themselves — it’s an important time to make connections between suicide and firearms.
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By the numbers
That’s particularly true when examining the alarming statistics: Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, and, on average, there are 129 suicides per day.
The leading means of suicide in the U.S. is firearms, with guns accounting for just over half (50.6 percent) of suicides, or about 61 deaths a day; that rate of firearm suicide is 10 times that of other high-income countries.
Gun suicides — claiming over 22,000 lives each year, including more than 1,000 children and teens — make up two thirds of all gun deaths in America. Firearms are the most lethal method of self-harm, with an approximate fatality rate of 85 percent, while less than five percent of people attempting suicide with other methods will actually die.
“Firearm suicide is a significant public health crisis in the U.S.,” notes a report on the topic from Everytown for Gun Safety. “Given the unique lethality of firearms as a means of suicide, policies and practices that limit or disrupt access to firearms have been shown to save lives.”
Education is key
The first step in addressing the risk of guns and suicide, notes Barber, is raising awareness — that having a firearm in a household is associated with an increased risk of suicide, particularly among youths; that proper safety storage can be lifesaving; and that sometimes, all it takes for someone to live through feeling suicidal is to wait it out — while having lethal weapons safely out of reach.
Luckily, the openness of various organizations to address the issues has improved dramatically since the Means Matter project launched in the early 2000s.
“Going back 15 years ago, suicide groups weren’t talking about guns and gun groups weren’t talking about suicide,” she says. “For suicide groups, it was too controversial. For gun groups it was just not on their radar.”
Now, it seems, most, if not all, suicide prevention organizations — not to mention gun groups, both pro and con — have a clear policy addressing gun safety.
“We’re stepping out of that two-sided arena, saying, ‘Let’s get together and learn from each other’s biases and blind spots,’” Barber says. “It’s not a debate, it’s a search… And we’ve got to take this out of a political context and just put it into a practical gun safety issue.”
The leading method of suicide in America is firearms. Here's how gun-control policies can help
Reviewed by CUZZ BLUE
on
September 13, 2019
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