There are a few key points that Ms. Dunkerly misses in her grief & frustration. I'd hate to think that one person's unfortunate removal from a volunteer position would prevent so many from seeking help from an org that does such good.
Suicide & guns are inextricably linked. Suicides by gun account for most of the suicides in the US & for too long nothing has been done about it. This is partly because the federal government/CDC has been banned for more than 2 decades from studying guns & health.
AFSP meanwhile has been trying to fill the gap left by the gov. AFSP is the largest private funder of suicide prevention research in the US.
This research includes studies on lethal means including firearms. In 2016 AFSP announced more than a million dollars for a study about lethal means counseling. I urge all of those commenting here to check out all the studies listed on AFSP's website.
AFSP's partnership with NSSF is not some shady back-door deal. It is a first of its kind effort to reach gun owners where they are. Ms. Dunkerly is right in that AFSP does not specifically tell people to get rid of their guns. Have you ever tried to tell someone who loves their firearms to get rid of them? You get nowhere fast. Instead, AFSP is trying to show gun owners how simple steps like locking up firearms or (where legal) giving them to someone to store can save the life of someone in crisis.
If you've been impacted by suicide, I hope you will check out AFSP. It could change your life.
3
I agree with Erin Dunkerly. Suicide with a gun is so easy - and no second thoughts can happen. I lost someone in my family also.
Will America ever overcome its gun mania?
6
Angie was my children's babysitter back in 1986 when she shot herself during an argument with her parents, with her father's pistol. Depression is not the only cause of suicide. She was only 16. At her funeral, I sat with her girlfriend, Renee, and they had an open casket. Renee and I would not go up, but Renee's mother did, and came back to tell us what a good job the funeral director did. I still want to scream.
2
If every NYT reader who has experienced suicide in their circle of family/friends were to write a comment to this opinion, the thread would never end.
My paternal uncle killed himself in 1970. He locked himself in his camper and set it on fire, giving him the "choice" to burn to death or kill himself with his sidearm. He chose the latter.
Eighteen years later, his elder brother, my father, used the EXACT SAME WEAPON [that he'd unimaginably kept since his brother's death] to take his own life. The gun's handle was still charred from the fire two decades prior.
I have no epiphany, no great insight; simply an observation that comes from experience: guns cause wounds and scars that are never seen.
Until it's too late.
10
Suicide attempts with guns are more often successful. I have 2 dear friends who lost loved ones to suicide and the acts were most likely a quick reaction to a situation, that without a gun available, would have resolved. Suicide is often a permanent solution to a temporary problem. The devastation it leaves behind is exactly that, devastation.
3
I’m afraid you’ve got things backwards. It’s the A.F.S.P. that’s responsible for allowing the pro-gun lobby into it’s ‘tent’ and permitting itself to be co-opted by them. The A.F.S.P. leadership talked themselves into allowing the pro-gun money to corrupt their organization & blunt their message. Follow where the money went and you’ll find out who was bought.
5
What money? Make up something else. There was no money exchange.
There had to be tangible benefits short but more likely longterm or otherwise why would they have sacrificed their integrity and corrupted themselves?
4
I, too, raised money for AFSP when my teenaged daughter died after taking a doctor-prescribed drug that the FDA states causes suicidality. Imagine my shock when later I spoke with Christine Moutier, AFSP's chief medical officer who repeatedly stated akathisia--the prescription-drug induced disorder that causes suicide--isn't really a critical public health concern. I subsequently learned AFSP was founded by many pharma/medical execs and takes a lot of pharma money. Hence, AFSP refuses to discuss akathisia nor prescriptions that carry suicidality as an ADR. Why would they when much of their funding comes directly from the pharmaceutical companies who sell these products?
Moutier often calls for a removal of the FDA Black Box warnings. It's painfully clear AFSP is not in the business of reducing suicides caused by prescription drugs nor firearms. But I do advocate for such, and I share my daughter's documentary so that others can be safer health care consumers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1haYwZGcSRY&t=2s
7
I've captained a team that has raised $63,000 in overnight walks since our son died by suicide in 2010. I was literally about to make a significant year-end contribution to A.F.S.P. when I read this OP-ED. Now the funds will go to another charity.
Despite all the positives of A.F.S.P., I'm going to have to rethink working with them in the future.
16
There is a sincere and absolute conviction amongst people who have no use for guns and see no reason for anyone to use them outside the military and law enforcement, that convincing a majority of citizens that guns are too lethal to allow private ownership of them will result it an outright ban that will end all gun violence. They choose to ignore all the gun owners who do secure them and use the safely, who do not feel ashamed of owing and using guns, and without whose cooperation the better control of guns will not be possible.
3
Yeah, and the "Auto Lobby" is hindering DUI prevention too. Cars and guns have much more positive usefulness than negative. Guns aren't the reason that people kill. Guns don't cause killing - people do. And people will kill with a kitchen knife if they cant get a gun. Or jump off a bridge. And since arsonists use matches should we ban those too? Your political views are always on display in the Opinion section. Do you ever have a conservative Op-Ed Contributor?
2
I had a friend hang himself last Spring. Is tope control the answer? I am all for suicide prevention. But it is dominated by gun control zealots who really care more about gun comtrol.
2
This article is highly confused and disingenuous.
"having a gun in the home is associated with an increased risk of firearm suicide" Sure - but it only increases risk if you're suicidal. For the vast majority of people the risk is nil. Put it this way: having a car in the garage is associated with an increased risk of drunk driving - that does NOT mean having a car increases your risk of drunk driving.
"yet it offers no guidance on how a civilian can legally remove a firearm from its owner" Nor should it: there is no law that would allow one citizen to assume such authority over another. Suicide prevention is not an excuse for gun control.
'whose training materials state, “A gun stored primarily for personal protection must be ready for immediate use.” This is confusing and potentially deadly for gun owners and those inside their homes who may be thinking of taking their own lives. They need to be nowhere near a gun.' There is nothing confusing or illogical about it. One must weigh one's own risks.
'“frequently asked questions” about its partnership with the National Shooting Sports Foundation that includes, “Is the partnership advocating no guns in the home?” The answer is a confounding “No.”' And this is where the cat jumps out of the bag: The author has no business co-opting a suicide prevention effort to lobby against gun ownership. Moreover, having a gun in the home is ultimately a personal decision, regardless of someone else's perceived risk.
5
you sound like a lobbyist for the gun manufacturers or the NRA
16
I hope the author puts her money and volunteer time on the line and leaves this spineless organization. Surely there are other suicide prevention orgs that are not in the business of protecting gun sales to people with suicide on their minds.
7
We live in the world's most FREE country. Not everyone can deal with that, but Americans insist on law-abiding people having the means to resist oppressive government at any level as well as to protect our country from outsiders.
The scariest part may be the foreigners brought in to our cities wholesale with nary a question asked.
Thus, an Australian women speaks her mind openly to a Muslim shipped in here from Somalia with a minimum of understanding about how we live -
- and RUSHED into police work by mindless politicians -
- and of course, he immediately murders the defenseless woman in cold blood. He shot her though his partner's open squad-car window!
This news is so damaging to progressive advocates mistakenly hired in the media that none of our coastal media outlets are even touching the real impact of this tragedy.
5
Mounting a successful armed rebellion against a democratically-elected government is called a "coup." The founders had some ideas about armed insurrections, probably quite different from yours.
If you want your government to be more representative of the people, and more responsive to their needs, there are things that you can do: For one, support efforts to make it easier for people to vote, instead of deliberately keeping certain groups from voting as the Republicans have admitted to doing. Voting day could even be a national holiday. Support candidates and elected officials who aren't in bed with oligarchs and corporate interests. Scott Pruitt is not our friend. Support a free press, the right of citizens to peaceably assemble, the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively, the right to be free from unlawful search and seizure. You should be happy to know that six of the 20 protesters and citizen journalists who were on trial for "rioting" during the inauguration were acquitted of all charges. The list of ways to strengthen our democracy and keep government of the people and by the people is long. None of it involves your guns. Buying into the false argument that gun owners' threat of force is what keeps government in line serves only to weaken democratic institutions.
I won't bother responding to your irrational fear of outsiders.
15
The only realistic means of preventing tyranny is to participate in democratic institutions. By the time armed resistance becomes the only way to resist tyranny, tyranny has already taken control.
5
correction: "six of the J20 protesters and citizen journalists, who were on trial"
"but they result in death 82.5% of the time".
Contrary to the frequent assertions, people who survive one suicide attempt do not all just go home and try again. In particular, survivors of that first attempt by gunshot are not more likely to finish the job than those who survive a wistful of sleeping pills or an ineffective job of cutting their wrists, etc., indicating that their longing for death, and presumably that of the successful gun suicides, is no greater than other means classified as suicide attempts, most of which apparently are more of a cry for help or the result of an intermittent episode of despair than a real, intentional plan.
in support of this is the data that most firearm suicides involve a handgun kept loaded and unlocked in the home, similar to the pattern of most firearm homicides. It appears that in the majority of cases, the determination to kill oneself or another person can't even persist for the time and effort involved in unlocking a gun safe and loading the gun, although it lasts long enough to pick up one that's handy and ready for use and to pull the trigger.
Ironically, this most affects those who are anxious enough about the vanishingly small risk of home invasion, etc. to feel they need instant access to lethal force in their own home to ensure their survival.
I am sick to my stomach after reading this. Sincere thanks to the author for standing up on this.
Since my brother's suicide death 15 years ago (not from a firearm), I, too, have volunteered for AFSP, participated in their walks, etc. I have given and raised more than $10,000 for the AFSP over the years. All that stops right now.
13
The combination of medication and guns are a bad mix. Many antidepressants have been known to manufacture depression and Akathisia--a condition that produces an urge to end it all impulsively.
2
Yet, medications also PREVENT suicides by gunfire. We can't use too broad a brush to paint this picture.
We need to spread the understanding that no anxiety or depression medications, any more than painkillers, can handle ALL the problem being treated, but that the patient and doctor must work together to use the meds effectively and safely.
1
The Author's belief that there's a "documented higher risk for suicide deaths for those who keep firearms in the home" is not substantiated by the studies she provides. Buried in those studies, among a blizzard of charts, numbers and the arcane language of statistics in the following conclusion:
"The availability of firearms in the home may not be the catalyst for suicidal ideation, but firearms may be a preferred method of suicide among those who have suicidal thoughts." Note that individuals first commit to suicide and then chose the method. Note that "firearms" may be "A PREFERRED METHOD", not THE PREFERRED METHOD. The question not answered in the studies is whether, absent a firearm, would the individual have found another tool? The answer is likely yes if we look at the top 25 countries with the highest suicide rates. The US, notwithstanding over 300M firearms, is not on the list but the Countries on the suicide list have one thing in common, the most restrictive gun laws on the planet. In other words the absence of a firearm didn't stop a person who had made up their mind.
Rather then marching against firearms and the 2nd amendment, your time would be better spent marching FOR EFFECTIVE MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT. You might be surprised that the NRA will fully support you.
6
If firearms are a preferred method, and firearms are the most deadly of all methods, then the conclusion - and increased risk of death by suicide - follows.
5
A bottle of Barbiturates will kill you just as dead as a gun. The list of high suicide rate countries demonstrates that the absence of a firearm didn't stop people from killing themselves. Thanks for the comment.
4
but it is far easier and deadlier to get a gun.
guns are made for killing
it is not hard to figure out.
3
I wonder what the source of gun lust is today. I am 81 and I grew up when Westerns were the craze on all media, movies, books, radio and of course TV starting in the 50s. In the the 60s, there were Westerns on every night of the week. I couldn’t wait till I got my first BB gun, my first 22, my first shotgun. I loved hunting for birds and bunnies. I have now given all my guns away, mostly to my son. He served in the Army, 27 months in Iraq, and is now a deputy prosecutor. Wisely, he keeps all his guns in a safe, secure from his children. I still do a lot of shooting, but only with camera. The Second Amendment needs to be revised. The opening phrase is is ignored by the NRA, regarding a well regulated militia. Having a gun should be similar to having a drivers license. Training, registration and insurance should be mandatory. Assault weapons should be banned, and pistol permit should be extremely limited. Will we ever start using our brains?
15
So why don’t YOU start the effort to revise the second amendment?
I suggest you read the D.C. v Heller SCOTUS case, Scalia writing for the majority. here's a link:
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/554/570.html
Despite what my wife says, I've been using my brain for over 70 years and still enjoy time at the shooting range/ skeet/ trap range and fishing mountain streams with my fly rod. I respectfully disagree with your belief the 2nd amendment or the Bill of Rights is in need of revision nor does the SCOTUS. Thanks
5
Please accept my condolences on the death of your father. Let me share a perspective of a Canadian male gun owner. I am an avid shooting sports enthusiast. I hunt. I am a member of the provincial IPSC pistol shooting association. I am of all that "gun enthusiast" and more. However, I am also the husband of a wonderful woman who is living/hanging on dealing with at-times almost debilitating Type 1 mania-depression. The firearms in my house are not only locked away, but also have trigger locks installed. Some of them are even disabled (bolts removed from rifles - these are stored and locked separately). All ammunition is also locked away separately. The keys are with me all times. Why? My wife has tried to take her life twice in the past 16 months with hoarded prescription meds. I could not live with myself if she was able to access my weapons and use them on herself - its one thing to treat a drug overdose suicide attempt - quite another involving a self-inflicted gun shot. It is not even a inconvenience to me to store my firearms in such a matter. Its a matter of personal responsibility. I cannot fathom why this modicum of risk prevention is so incomprehensible to gun owners. To not be bothered to do so and plead the overide-booshwah of "firearm readiness" for "personal protection" is utter, complete arrant nonsense.
6
Did a brochure tell you to lock up your guns? Why do you assume that you are the only gun owner that locks up your guns because it's not in a brochure?
I’m not a gun owner nor a fan of the NRA. I just reread your article and I get this terrible feeling that you just threw the afsp under the bus. You mention suicide by gun account for roughly 6% of all suicides. Should the mission, not “broader purpose”, as you so cleverly claim, of the afsp to prevent suicides be muddied by offending a large part of the population? Calling them low-information isn’t accurate and reveals far more about you than it does them. You may want the afsp to have more than one purpose. The problem with the afsp jumping into the black whole of gun control is that suicide prevention will quickly take a back seat to their one and only mission. Preventing suicides. I hope I’ve articulated this point well enough.
You may have been let go from the afsp because you wanted the organization to focus on gun control more than you were concerned about those 94% of people who were 100% effective in killing themselves.
Now that you pulled the strings that be at the NYT to get your agenda out there I hope people don’t stop supporting this group that never asked to be a punching bag that is gun control.
2
Sixty percent of gun deaths are suicides. NOT 6%.
Big difference there. Big enough to blow a hole in your already weak argument.
7
You misquote the figures. Firearms are 51% of all suicides (according to the AFSP website), not 6%; they are 6% of all suicide attempts. As stated, shooting yourself results in death 80 % of the time, compared to 2% of the time for other attempts. This shouldn't be too surprising.
Unless we can make shooting yourself less fatal, it would seem the most effective gain in prevention would come from reducing the actual frequency of shooting yourself. Every 100 gun suicide attempts prevented save 80 lives; preventing 100 non-gun suicide attempts saves 2 lives
4
Suicide is the result of a person's choice and desire to end his/her life. There are already five states in the United States that allow, by law, physician-assisted suicides. More states are contemplating the pros and cons of changing their laws to allow suicide. Does the fact that a physician is present and/or helps the person complete their choice make the act better?
If a person is committed to the act of suicide should prevention be a goal of his/her friends and family?
2
Most people (i.e. me, and people who agree with me) can see a pretty wide division between people with agonizing, untreatable cancer, or seeing themselves well down the slide of Alzheimer's, and the middle schoolers who get bullied online, or the lovelorn swain whose fantasy of wedded bliss has just been rudely squelched by the object of his affection.
We as a society even draw the line at euthanuzation of a pet for insufficient cause.
1
Most people (i.e. me, and people who agree with me) can see a pretty wide division between people with agonizing, untreatable cancer, or seeing themselves well down the slide of Alzheimer's, and the middle schoolers who get bullied online, or the lovelorn swain whose fantasy of wedded bliss has just been rudely squelched by the object of his affection.
Suicide when mentally ill or going through a crisis isn’t a desire to die, it is a desire to escape a seemingly inescapable mental state/reality, and death seems the only viable escape. It’s what happens when the pain of life overwhelms the fear of death. Sometimes suicide is the only viable escape, sometimes it is a just a dark impulse gone too far.
Assisted suicide is much less traumatic for family because there is a process that ensures that your kids don’t walk into your home and unexpectedly find your mangled corpse. There is an element of planning which everyone is involved in. If the author’s father didn’t succumb to his darkest impulse and went the assisted suicide route, he’d have to talk to at least one psychologist. Exploring the path of assisted suicide may actually save lives by putting people in touch with the kind of help they actually need.
How terrible and incredibly awful for you personally, that a non-profit, educational group such as this was so easily bought by the very industry that is one of the main preventable causes of the harm it was supposedly trying to avert. Too bad the greed of the decision makers outgrew their principles. Once again, proof that everything has its price.
Sorry for the loss of your Dad. My husband tried to kill himself by taking an overdose, which he instantly regretted and told me about, which saved his life. If we had a gun in the house, he wouldn't be alive today.
4
The reason you try to stop them is because it's the final solution. With help, they can get better and tomorrow can be different. Teenagers are killing themselves in record numbers and 41% are with guns. The numbers of teens killing themselves with guns is on the rise.
Doctor assisted suicide is not for those who are healthy.
3
The author can take comfort in the fact that his father's 2nd amendment rights were not violated. After all, that seems to be the most important thing
1
Another reason, not to donate to these big, corporate "non-profits" that take your money and then, decide how to spend it. I, for one, will not be taken for a fool. My hard earned money will not go to enable these rip-offs, from flying first class, or raking in big salaries, for doing nothing, while others do the walks and fund-raising.
2
So I guess you’ve eliminated all charities.
You had to raise $1000 just to become a member? Id be a little suspicious of any non-profit that had that kind of requirement.
5
I don't see anything about that on their website. They do list "Access to lethal means including firearms and drugs" in their list of risk factors.
So doctor assisted suicide is fine, abortion is fine, but a person who takes their own life, with a gun, is not ok. The people who take their own lives made their decision, but the baby in the womb never had that option.
1
Have you ever asked a "baby in the womb" whether he or she would like to end the comfy uterine existence and get dumped into this world? Where, if you're coming at this from the Biblical standpoint, they have to spend a lifetime of toil and pain to atone for Adam and Eve?
Have you ever had such a discussion with a "baby in the womb" who had terrible defects which will cause it a lifetime of suffering? Or had a real heart to heart talk with a "baby in the womb" about what life as a hereditarily impoverished resident of one of the world's great slums, like Calcutta or Mexico City, would be like?
When you get a message from one of them that they'd be real disappointed to miss out on such a blessing, let us know. Otherwise, we'll just have to muddle through with our own stunted senses of morality which lead us to such silly acts as trying to keep the grownup "babies in the womb" from killing themselves over a momentary despair of this paradise on earth which we all have prepared for them.
1
This is a terrible shame. No one organization should bar others with similar goals from participating in the discussion about suicides, especially those by guns.
About six years ago, my friend's brother also "borrowed" a gun and killed himself. He had been suffering from addiction and poorly diagnosed and untreated mental illness. He had asked for help the previously when he felt suicidal but this time he didn't.
It is devastating even though I did not know him well as an adult. My memories of him are mostly as the tow-haired younger brother of my best friend in high school.
There is no question that people with access to guns are more likely to suicide and to be successful in killing themselves. It only takes an instant.
May I suggest, Ms. Dunkerly, that you join the Brady group or another group that is working toward better gun sense? You can't change the past, as you well know, but you can make a difference in the future.
3
Suicide is awful. Those left behind are not only left with terrible grief, but often terrible guilt. I applaud you for pointing out the horror that is the gun lobby. Make no mistake. Guns do not add value to anyone's life. Here in Chicago, a motorist was killed by another man who shot him and then realized he had the wrong person in a fit of road rage. Oops. No going back. If he hadn't had a gun in his car, the other guy would still be alive today. How about those children in Sandy Hook? The concert goers in Vegas? How quickly we forget.
As usual, we liberals try to temper our position by caving in to a more moderate position. Hunting? Ok. Target shooting? Ok. AK-47? Ok, just no bump stock...maybe. We do not need guns in a 21st century modern society. Period.
4
Sure - just let the criminals have them.
1
According to NAMI and its Canadian correlate, 90% of individuals who die by suicide experience mental illness. This article is grounded in the view that many suicides are avoidable absent guns in the home. The argument, in essence, is that the we should create obstacles to keep the mentally ill from killing themselves. And yet many liberals support assisted suicide for the physically disabled.
Many of the mentally ill have had hellish lives and know when enough is enough. Yet we are to believe that they must be barred from committing suicide while those with chronic physical diseases often are encouraged to do so. I'm not on board with that.
1
"According to NAMI and its Canadian correlate, 90% of individuals who die by suicide experience mental illness."
Suicidal ideation is a sign of mental illness; therefore, anyone who has had thoughts of killing himself or herself has mental illness.
1
Persuading mentally impaired individuals to consider temporarily removing firearms from their home seems reasonable. I can't say the same thing for an effort to create government or private programs for the same purpose. One seems to be in keeping with the organization's purpose, the other to be the organization's conversion to the political issue of gun control.
Suicide intersects with end of life issues. I'm 76, not suicidal but realistic that with my several ailments, 4 more years would be kind of lucky. I would love to be able to buy for $100 a one time gun with which I could end my life and have the gun destroy itself at the same time. What a huge relief that would be.
3
Erin, I too am a suicide survivor, and I am so sorry you know this terrible and painful loss as well. I value your work and this article, thank you.
2
Only gun advocates don't know that having a gun in the home raises your risk of being murdered with your weapon or committing suicide with it. What amazes me is parents whose child was killed by another child, stand up and defend having guns in the home. These people are totally irresponsible. Even a two-year-old can pull the trigger. Gun organizations don't care about anything other than their supposed right to be a gun toter even at the expense of too many deaths from misused guns.
6
Did I miss the articles about the home owners who apprehended a home invader with their firearms?
Or the citizen carrying a firearm who stopped the mass shooting?
2
I missed those stories.
But I did catch the one about the guy who shot and killed 58 people in Vegas.
16
I took care of a woman as a R.N. after her surgery. She was blind with a big dent in her temple from a suicide attempt. I was a mental health nurse and was just working medical/surgical as short of staff. I thought this is an amazing opportunity to gain insight into the impulsivity of suicide. It had been 20 years since her attempt and spoke freely about it. The reason she gave as a trigger was a "cheating husband ". She stated "living blind was the price for the stupidity of pulling the trigger". She never tried suicide again even though she was disabled. She was in the hospital for a hysterectomy. I will never forget her regret at having used a gun instead of swallowing pills and panicking and calling 911. The majority attempted with pills are saved. The marjority attemped with guns are dead or brain damaged or totally blind.
6
This is a numbers problem. There are reportedly over 300m guns in America. From simple observation, a third of them may be in my town. Personally, I don't see the point but, the state Republican legislature allows concealed carry with no training and a lot of people must feel threatened by something. During this session I fully expect roof racks on SUVs for transporting the family RPG or, at the least, an AK displayed with the stick figure family in the rear window. As with prohibition, no gun law is going to work. The supply is endless. With a couple hundred dollars, I could drive less than than 30 miles and buy my weapon of choice. There's only one solution and the effort to clean up this mess would create more problems than currently exist.
I can understand why this suicide prevention group doesn’t want to advocate for gun control. Mixing the politics of gun control into the mission of preventing suicides are two totally different agendas.
Suicide is a choice. If we decide as a society that we are going to eliminate it as an option, we must also come to the understanding that freedom will also be significantly curtailed. Consequently, if we elect to try stopping every bad thing from happening, then we might as well give up an enormous amount of our freedoms as well.
Trying to prevent suicide by controlling guns is like attempting to prevent arson by banning matches. The argument that it makes the act harder – that somehow this is a good thing – is naïve and short-sighted. It's no different from restricting access to the Internet to make it more difficult for bullies to push impressionable young people to suicide (another serious problem). Such things, however well-intentioned, would do much more harm than good.
In South Korea and Japan, where firearms are severely restricted and rarely used for the task, suicide rates are nonetheless significantly higher than in the US. And ironically, because Koreans and Japanese are so intent on doing away with themselves, the methods they choose are just as lethal as firearms.
The reason people opt for firearms to commit suicide in America is specifically because guns so efficient for the job. Choosing the lethality of a firearm is not a flaw when someone decides to commit suicide; it’s the reason people freely chose this option in the first place.
2
Two-thirds of all gun deaths in the US are suicides. Most of these are elderly people using a quick and sure means to mercifully end the agony of a protracted fatal illness.
If easy access to a gun is a cause of suicide, explain this. The US ranks 48th in the world in the rate of suicide, lower on the list than countries that do not allow private guns; Japan, Finland, Argentina, India, Poland, and Sweden all have higher suicide rates. And the country with the highest rate of gun ownership in the world, Israel, stands at 143rd on the list, just one-third the US suicide rate.
Suicide is often very painful on those left behind. But gun ownership clearly has nothing to do with it. And using suicide as a means to obtain a totally irrelevant goal, the un-Constitutional elimination of private gun ownership, is just shameful.
2
It's not quite that simple. If you look at the U.S. state by state, you'll find significantly higher rates of suicide where gun ownership is higher. Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, etc. all have higher rates than the countries you named. Essentially, the states with lower gun ownership and more restrictive gun laws end up bringing down the U.S. suicide rate. Easy access to guns definitely leads to higher suicide rates. Now, I would not advocate for elimination of private gun ownership. Trying prohibition would fail miserably. However, the individuals and groups advocating and celebrating gun ownership need to be honest about the very real consequences and not minimize the impact of pro-gun policies.
3
Availability of firearms for purchase does make a different in a successful suicide. A colleague's son was struggling with drug addiction and mental health issues. He attempted suicide via overdose several times but was saved. Finally, he purchased a shotgun which in FL does not have a waiting period of any kind and shot himself, successfully killing himself. His mother found him in the woods.
After reading this article and many of the comments, and as an advocate myself for suicide prevention, I went to the American Foundation for Suicice Prevention website, https://afsp.org/, to see if it had any mention of its association with the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
What I read was most interesting and I suggest others also take this link and read it as well. AFSP has taken no funding from the NSSF and explains clearly why it reached out to this organization.
Here is the link: https://afsp.org/afsps-position-firearms-suicide-prevention/
From my own experience with a severe depression which almost cost me my life, in my opinion, what we need is a more robust mental health care system with many more well-trained mental health professionals who can work with people who have thoughts of suicide and have thought of making attempts and/or made attempts. Mental illness impacts people of all walks of life and of all ages.
Healing is possible from a mental illness as was in my case or can be managed with the right medications and therapy for others who need life-long treatment.
I also lost my father to suicide by way of a firearm he kept next to him in a nightstand. When will this country wake up to the fact that guns are polluting our society at its core. The gun lobby wants us to believe that ownership is a fundamental right as decreed by the Founding Fathers. What a bunch of baloney. The writers of the Constitution would be appalled if they appeared tomorrow in our midsts and saw how we had distorted their words. They could never have foreseen the advanced technology these weapons utilize. Plain as day, the easier guns are to obtain, the more people will use them and that includes killing themselves and others.
2
There is nothing more miserable than being forcibly kept alive when you want to die. Everything in the world, at that point, is being forced on you.
Denying people access to the most effective way of killing themselves -- a way that is probably much less likely than most to end with involuntary psychiatric hospitalization, which is the worst possible outcome of a suicide attempt, because it involves not only forced existence but forced violation of your mind with drugs and coercive efforts to change your behavior -- makes it more likely they will end up in psychiatric hospitals.
So hurrah for the gun lobby. And as for the author, well, I'd say I hope he attempts suicide, ends up in a psych ward, and learns the error of his views, but I'm not capable of that much malice. So I'll have to settle for hoping he learns some empathy.
I appear to have misgendered the author. My apologies. Just because you are advocating horrible things does not mean you deserve to be misgendered.
"About 85 percent of suicide attempts with a firearm end in death. (Drug overdose, the most widely used method in suicide attempts, is fatal in less than 3 percent of cases.)," says Harvard Study: https://goo.gl/JHWBWm. For those who believe suicide is successful no matter the instrument.
Erin, so sorry for your loss and applause for your efforts at awareness and prevention. I have suffered from depression for years and demanded that my former fiance store his gun elsewhere than our apartment. I actually had to get the police involved as he was reluctant to part with it (note, he is my former fiance).
Why tempt fate???
1
Is this a partnership or a co-opting?
Take over board seats and change the direction of the organization.
My suggestion... start a competing suicide prevention organization which loudly proclaims... DON'T KEEP GUNS AT HOME!
1
This is self-contradicting article, and the author apparently failed to review the references - which often contradict their basic premise.
In the first place, her father did not own a firearm - he stole one from a neighbor: "In August 2006, my father fatally shot himself with a gun he pilfered from a friend’s bedroom." Funny how a lawyer would use the term "pilfered" for the act of theft.
The author clearly does not know, or chooses not to know - the NRA and NSSP positions on safe firearms storage - to prevent unauthorized access. In fact, the NRA book on basic firearms handling has an entire chapter on that subject - and it is constantly emphasized in training classes. Instead, the author selectively cites the NRA position on firearms used for the purpose of self-defense. And this is a trained lawyer? They remember advocacy classes, but forget the fact-finding.
The author also mischaracterized to purpose of this effort by the NSSF - it was designed for the firearms community (e.g. gun owners) who would be the first line of defense against unauthorized access. The partnership was not designed for the general public - which the author would have known had they even read the press release.
We have no way of knowing the facts around their supposed dismissal from the ASFP - on their characterization of those circumstances - but of course, they are wiser than the AFSP leadership.
One can easily see why they parted ways - their own personal agenda was all that mattered.
1
The NRA is no different than a drug cartel, or Big Pharma pushing opioids as hard as it can. It's all about profit for the gun industry and political power for those using paranoia and tribalism as a tool for getting votes.
My sympathy to all who have lost loved ones to suicide by gun or murder by gun or as a result of accidents with guns.
It is outrageous that America has been duped into believing guns = security. This is not the work of sportsmen, hunters, or people who have a legitimate, documented reason to fear they may be the target of violence. This is the work of the NRA which has become a nefarious, insidious agent of, not just death, but of social disintegration.
Who/what does the NRA represent? We have read that rational members, who are the majority of its members, support good background checks, reasonable gun control, safe gun storage. These are people who enjoy target shooting, hunting, gun collecting - NOT building an arsenal. But, the NRA is led by radicals who promote irrational fear. What is their goal other than supporting the profits of gun manufacturers?
The NRA's agenda is nothing short of institutional, social breakdown and vigilantism - your neighbor is a lunatic, a violent criminal; the police and laws can't protect you, you need guns - lots of them - powerful military assault weapons if you want to protect you family. The message is, on its face, insane. It is a race to violence and death.
Who is behind the NRA's goal to destroy our institutions, our society? The gun manufactures, for sure; but there is some other hiden agent which means America no good. The NRA appears to be a front for some outside effort to spread harm and havoc in America. They are winning.
2
Please, does it really matter? Any of this?
Protecting cash flows to you, your friends, and any other influence peddler is what is most important.
Guns, knives, it simply does not matter, the money does......and if you can fix that, problems will be solved
One of my best friends killed himself with a gun. It resulted in an increase in drinking on my part, poor eating, and failing out and dropping out of college. I did not realize it until recently that the reason for my downward spiral was his suicide. It must have also impacted his other friends as well and of course devastated his family. It took me two years to get back to school and graduate and get on with my life. This was the impact of guns on me and those around me.
1
When you look at the majority of mass shootings in this country, it's obvious that they are actually suicides. Very angry suicides by people want to take revenge upon the world that has made them unhappy. But still, basically, suicides. Without guns, these people would simply throw themselves off a building or open up a vein. Instead, with ready availability of guns, they have the ability to take others with them. And they do. ("When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.")
5
Non gun owners and gun safety advocates can scream all day long. Nothing serious will happen to curb unnecessary gun deaths until gun owners themselves grow up and stop being led around by the nose by the NRA. Gun owners and the NRA used to be as American as the Boy Scouts. “Aways be prepared and do a good turn every day” was the saying. Now all we hear are defensive, unproven cries that the Governemnt is out to take their God given guns and re-write their God-given constitution. Instead of watching Fox News and reading Breitbart and Trump tweets, they should go back to their roots and read a book.
3
This is sheer madness. And, call me naive, but the comments from the anti-gun control front, continues to horrify me. No one is coming to take your guns, and, sadly, the odds are that gun control advocates will never make a dent in the proliferations of what can only be called weapons of mass destruction, so why the antagonism toward those of us who favor some form of gun controls?
And, no, I'm not a hysterical liberal gun control advocate. The fact is that more Americans were killed by guns in 2016 than soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. When guns cause more civilian deaths in America than military deaths in war, I don't think it's unwarranted to call guns in America weapons of mass destruction.
6
Maybe one day, sooner rather than later, the gun lobby & the NRA will have to face the consequences for their actions similar to the tobacco industry.
What a remarkable day it will be when the American people can see full page advertisements saying "guns kill, if you want you and your loved ones to live, get rid of your guns".
1
When I was a little boy I couldn't have imagined a time in America when the greatest sales tool available in a world overrun with marketing aids would be FEAR.
America Land of the Chicken hearted. Not much longer the home of the free.
The nra sells fear as the way to insure record profits for the gun industry, we must be ready to blow someone's head apart at the first hint of menace. Or the first twinge of paranoia.
t rump sold himself and his wall to citizens who are afraid of little children with brown skin and parents and grandparents trying to flee from persecution and death in their own lands.
he and his party sell fear of change as the way to keep from having to make hard choices about the future and the visions we might have of a future.
One thing that must from here forward be admitted: there are no...NO... responsible gun ownership organizations in the U.S. If an organization decides to partner with one, that organization's identity is over.
2
Dear Erin,
First of all, please accept my condolences for your loss. If you wish to keep advocating for suicide prevention, you could always start your own organization. Here is a good forum to get your message out. Best of luck.
1
Considering the number of Americans depressed, and the increasing numbers getting depressed, the increase in arms and the ability to carry them everywhere seems a good way to kill off more Americans.
It's just way too easy for any human to just pull that little trigger. Way too easy.
How often do you read about people stabbing themselves to death? To not understand the deceptive ease with which firearms can be used is to not accept societal and personal responsibility for what we've allowed to happen: the gun industry has taken over not just the NRA, but they're worming their way into any and all areas of society where rational people are trying to control their dangerous presence. Firearms are lethal tools, and the NRA, which used to be about firearm and hunting safety training, has disintegrated into a fascist political group, one with extremist views, funded by the manufacturers of these weapons. The easy availability of military man-killer weapons is wrong for any sane society (I guess that lets us out). I speak as an army vet, all too familiar with what these weapons can do, in TRAINED hands. We should not believe anyone that says these things make anyone safe. THEY DO NOT. We need to limit access.
6
President's Column | Safety And Training Are Our Hallmarks
The NRA is America's most prolific proponent and provider of firearm safety and education, period.
Despite the cries of the national news media, it is much more than political lobbyists.
Gun safety and training is—and will always be at our core. Read More
https://www.americas1stfreedom.org/articles/2017/11/24/president-s-colum...
https://gunsafetyrules.nra.org
Another self-serving bureaucracy parading as a charity.
1
You are an articulate, committed activist. Please start a new organization that speaks to these issues. Sometimes that's the only way to move forward.
And I'm deeply sorry about your loss. Your love is a testament to what the world lost when your father killed himself.
3
It appears the NRA has infiltrated the AFSP probably with people, money and/or both. They are an insidious enemy of those who support the right to bear arms responsibly. Join the Brady Campaign. I will too. And thank you for pointing the figurative gun back at them.
3
So, you blame his suicide on guns? If a person takes sleeping pills, you would blame the tragedy on pills? What a crooked, politically correct logic. Next, ban cars because of the carnage a single car can create?
The issue to be addressed is depression and mental state.
1
I wonder how big and how many bribes the gun lobby paid for this partnership?
1
According to the AFSP website, "AFSP receives no funding from NSSF, firearms manufacturers or any gun lobbying organizations, nor is AFSP providing any funds to NSSF or similar groups. Further, we are not advocating in any way for the gun lobby. Likewise, we are not funded by, or providing funds to, any gun control organizations, nor are we advocating in any way for gun control organizations."
This is a dirty work by the NRA thugs. These thugs with blood in their hands are bankrolled by the gun makers. The crooks have infiltrated every level of power. Many legislators and mostly Republicans are on their payroll. Despite thousands of deaths by guns, the minority group is able to maintain the status quo. These crooks have boundless ambition as reflected by laws passed by State legislators to place automatic rifles in everyone’s hand. In the name of constitution, they brainwash people and thrive on fear mongering. The example in this case is another game played by the dirty crooks. It is a shame and disgrace that the executives of the organization were bought by the thugs. Do they have children? How do they sleep at night? The citizens can do much better. These corrupt individuals should be exposed and public shame is the best way to prevent similar events in the future.
6
Check out AFSP's tax forms 990 on Guidestar.com . The salaries and payments to independent noted are exorbitant--another nonprofit where people are profiting, which explains a lot.
4
The other day I unloaded the revolver and dry fired it at my head a few times. It's the first time I've done that.
Anyone who says I would have played with a knife or drugs or a razor has no idea what they're talking about. You know-it-alls are so full of it. Your arrogance is as bad as your lack of intellect and the need to insert your opinion where it doesn't belong.
You don't get to have an opinion on what a suicidal person will do. Here's the voice of authority speaking
If there were no guns, most people who killed themselves with one would not have used another method. Until you've been there, teetering on the edge, shut up. Just shut up.
5
Susan, Thank you for being bold and sharing. I'm glad your gun was not loaded. Please take care and reach out for help the next time those emotions come over you. All my best, Erin
2
The NRA is a domestic terrorist organization. It's political arm is the Republican Party.
The entire world can see this. Why can't Americans?
7
Perhaps off topic but to me one of the dumbest things the pro gun people tried to do was the Florida law that forbade physicians from asking about guns in the home.
If a patient does not want to have that discussion the patient can tell the physician he is not interested or he can find another physician.
Not only was that law stupid but it is also a violation of the first amendment.
For the originalists.
A Boston law in colonial times prohibited keeping a loaded gun in the home.
see Winkler Gunfight page 117
5
Obviously, the gun lobby (NRA) is promoting suicide and homicide. What
else are guns, rifles, and assault weapons good for? Hunting with
assault rifles? Doesn't that fill animals with inedible ammunition?
6
I don't desire an assault weapon but know the real logic. Assault weapons can have 20-30 bullets...a second clip...another 20-30. Three men break in your house in the dark...each with a 17 round glock pistol. ( Yes my house was broken into). They have 51 shots. They can miss a lot in the dark chaos and still kill you. If you have an old fashioned revolver, you can miss three times only.
A lone maniac on a train or at a school needs only a glock pistol and multiple magazines to do the same number of shots as an assault weapon.
A shotgun has advantages for the home defender in the city. Birdshot will kill at close range but lose lethality as it goes through successive walls....thus safer for bystanders and nearby houses than buckshot ( larger) or bullets.
Why don't the bad guys use fully-automatic guns, william?
What motivated the AFSP to partner with the National Shooting Sports Foundation (whose purpose, from their website "working day in and day out to promote, protect and preserve our industry and our sports") in the first place?
Money.
3
But it’s paying off in profits !!
Doing the wrong thing is, unfortunately, often very profitable.
3
Thank you for sharing your loss of your father by suicide. I'm in total shock. I had no idea AFSP was associated in any way with the National Sports Shooting organization, let alone the NRA. My younger son David died by suicide in August, 2014, of a gunshot to his chest. He left a note on his front door: Suicide. Call the sheriff's department. Phone number. He wiped his phone of all contacts except me. He left a handwritten will and a list of things to take care of, especially his dog. He was 50.
I heard about AFSP after the Out of the Darkness Walk in San Luis Obispo in 2014. I have fundraised and participated in planning the Walk and walked myself. I was the top fundraiser all 3 years since. At no time was anything said about AFSP's association with the National Sports Shooting organization.
Mental health is a huge problem, suicide even greater. Both David and I were on antidepressants, had counseling. He made the ultimate decision to end his pain, I did not. My pain of loss is real and unending. Dwelling on it doesn't help, but opening up about the mental health issues leading to suicide does.
Having firearms in the home is an open invitation to anyone living there to use them. I didn't know about David's gun collection until after his death. Until people acknowledge the tie between gun ownership and suicide nothing will change.
Thank you for your much needed Op-Ed contribution.
11
This group is wrong to refuse volunteers to the cause of suicide prevention based on their stand on gun control. However, in the 21st century, everything is highjacked for an agenda of some kind. Everything. My guess is that they a) want the NRA monies they might get in donations, and b) they want the focus on suicide prevention, not gun control.
As the author wrote, he was for gun control, but had no issue leaving that on the table for a bigger purpose. That purpose is still there, Erin! It's depression gone unseen, or avoided. Mental health issues are not the only driver. We live in a society where many feel marginalized, not because of the government or income inequality, or race, or religion. But, because they have either not found their place in their own lives (lots of work, ongoing), or they have lost something that kept them grounded.
We all need to 'see' our friends, neighbors, family members, and the strangers we encounter who are having a bad time. Smile, make them laugh, and offer help. If refused, show up with a smile anyway. Life is hard, it's not fair, and too many are sad, lonely, hopeless.
8
We shouldn't restrict gun ownership. There is nothing more important in life than having a gun. Think of the happiness it gives to owners to know they could be heroes. They could've stopped James Holmes at the Colorado theater, for example. It's unfortunate that he also had fantasies of being a hero striking out against unjust society, but we shouldn't do anything to make it harder for people to be heroes. Without James Holmes, none of us have the opportunity to make our mark with guns.
In 1993, my 23 year-old brother bought a gun. A few evenings later he drove to a nearby business, parked his car, sat behind the dumpster, put the cheap 45-cal in his mouth and ended his life. There was no note.
We were an upper middle-class family with no political connections. Good schools, church but not churchy, nothing salacious. My brother's suicide was neither expected nor predicted.
Authorities asked us how to report his death, suggesting we could spin it as unspecified violence rather than suicide. I don't know if my distraught parents ever answered that question. But at a memorial service in front of 1,000 community members, I spontaneously declared, "I don't know why my brother ended his life." The sentiment expressed through a veil of sympathy was stained with an unspoken, "why would you admit that?"
I live in Texas, work in energy, read the NY Times and listen to NPR. I typically vote for Democrats. I grew up with guns - hunting and sport clays. I don't support "taking away" anyone's guns.
Last stats I saw, gun-related deaths were half homicides, half suicides and less than 0.1% "legal use of lethal force." That includes self-defense and law enforcement shooting threats.
Guns kill people. The purpose of handguns is to kill people. Moreover, handguns enable spontaneous sadness to turn to tragedy. Automatic weapons don't jibe with hunting regulations.
As United States citizens, we have a high opinion of ourselves. How will history judge us?
43
Looking at county level number of homicides with firearms 24 of the top 25 counties in the country are Democrat, and of those 24 of 25 have a rate higher than the national average. Looking at the top 50 counties 46 are Democrat. Some of these counties are also in Red states. If the NRA and the GOP are the Devil, then the fact that Democrats do most of the shooting and killing leads one to the notion that from the Democrat perspective 'the Devil made me do it'.
A better explanation is that Democrats own firearms too, no one 'made them buy the guns', and a small number also misuse firearms, where 'no one made them misuse them'. Homicides and suicides are committed by and affect both parties, and the discussion on how to reduce misuse would go a lot farther if we would drop the political banter.
"Last stats I saw, gun-related deaths were half homicides, half suicides and less than 0.1% "legal use of lethal force." That includes self-defense and law enforcement shooting threats."
Per FBI stats.
2/3 of all shootings are suicides leaving about 11,000. Of those around 10% are police related. Almost 1000 are committed in four cities, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore and Los Angeles combined. The rest are accidental/careless handling or legitimate reasons.
2
I support better gun control to make restricting access to guns and ammunition from those likely to use them against innocent people or themselves more effective. However, one needs to understand that while many attempts at suicide are due to temporary states of mind and the easy access of weapons does make self destruction while in such a state more likely, simply eliminating these weapons will not end suicides as seems to be the message being asserted. The means used to commit suicide includes hanging, suffocation by means from exposure to carbon monoxide to plastic bags, overdose of drugs, leaping from great heights, and cutting open blood vessels, et al. People do become obsessed with suicide and preventing them from killing themselves can be uncertain. There are a lot of people who are seeking to use suicide as a justification to end private possession of firearms.
Leading Public Health officials such as David Hemenway of Harvard will tell you its easier to change the product than to change personal behavior. That's why he and Steven Teret of JHU advocate for the availability of child proof smart guns that can only be fired by authorized user. Anecdotal evidence suggests that almost half of the 21,000+ suicide deaths with guns annually involve the use of somebody else's firearm. Smart guns would negate the usage of "third party" firearms and save thousands of lives annually as well as prevent child gun accidents and the many crimes committed with the estimated 350,000 guns stolen annually
3
Walking in on the aftermath of a loved one who suicided by gun is something no one should have to see. To the author - I’m sorry you found your dad. I did, too. I often think that if such an instant method had not been available, he might have lived and changed his mind. Unfortunately, in the rural area where we lived at the time of his death, there was no mental health care. Twenty years later, same. If we can’t beat the gun lobby, we must work on mental health care reform.
4
My father attempted suicide with pills, and my brother found him. The guns he owned were removed from our home during the time he was a patient in therapy. He came home recovered, and the guns came home from a neighbor's.
There was no saving him on the second attempt, when he went into the basement on March 19, 1976 and shot himself.
Guns in homes where depressed people live is an accident waiting to happen. My father was an avid hunter. I was given my first gun when I was nine, for Christmas. We shot skeet almost every weekend for recreation.
He was depressed over the loss of a job. His marriage became difficult. These problems were solvable. We were part of a large community of caring and involved people who did what they could to help. But a gun in the house made all this irrelevant.
I inherited twenty guns. I sold the last one some years ago at auction, and watched the gavel come down on the gun my father used to kill himself.
I've thought about volunteering for suicide prevention, because I certainly have had to learn about it, but this behavior of AFSB is reprehensible, and I am glad the author has shone a light on its duplicity.
Shame on them.
54
Let me start by saying that I lost both my parents to self-inflicted gunshot wounds, my father when I was five, my mother when I was twenty-eight. I live in a state that has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, stopping just short of complete oppression of those who want to own guns. Yet, I legally own guns and support Americans' rights to own guns.
My little brother drank himself to death and my baby brother was driving drunk and killed himself coming perilously close to also killing his little girl. Yet, I believe in Americans' rights to imbibe liquor and own and drive cars.
Am I heartless not caring they are dead? No! I think of all of them daily. I miss them with such an ache in my heart that, sometimes, I cry for no apparent reason to those around me. They filled my life with joy while they lived - now they cannot.
How do I reconcile this apparent dichotomy? With logic, recognition of the situations that led to their decisions, and organizing my own life.
I raised three fine sons who I taught to respect, not avoid, guns, alcohol, and cars. I also taught them to be brave enough to admit when they have problems, manage them, and seek help if they need it. I not only told them, I lived my advice. I drink responsibly. I don't drive even after a single drink without hours between the two activities. I recognized my own depression and sought help when I needed it.
That's how we all should deal with a messy and dangerous world, not take away others' rights.
5
Thank you to the writer and the New York Times for publishing this piece. Having grown up with guns, researched guns and firearms deaths, and written about it, I am still amazed at how ignorant gun owners of the increased risk of suicide in a house with a gun. As a parent of teenagers, I am consistently dismayed at the parents who have children with mental health issues and substance abuse issues who have several guns available in the family home. The NRA has been so successful in creating a culture of gun owner identity, that these parents are either woefully ignorant of the risks, or care more about their identity as gun owners than their children's well being. Either way, there will be no change in laws or education until lawmakers start standing up to the NRA and remove legal restrictions on scientific inquiry regarding guns as a public health issue.
5
This may sound...different... but maybe the correlation between gun ownership and suicide is just a correlation- the real problem might be other factors that those who typically own firearms (people in Republican majority states) might be facing. Removing firearms may reduce suicide, but would it solve the underlying reason why they commit suicide? I say focus on the egg, not the chicken, though safe regulation of the chicken is a must.
Waleed I wholeheartedly agree that correlation is not causation but I think this misses the point. Humans around the world have a just if methods to employ to end their lives if they si choose. I'd suggest a comparison between successful suicide rates with firearms in the US where gun laws are liberal versus the same in the United Kingdom. I don't know the numbers but I can guess.
A few points:
1. The only effective gun control is gun control that makes guns scarce. Trying to predict through background checks who is going to become a criminal or mentally unfit is a fool's errand. You need to take guns out of circulation and stop the pipeline that puts more guns into circulation. It's the only way to severely limit the possibility of guns getting into the wrong person's hands.
2. The second amendment is an obstacle to sensible gun control. It should be repealed.
3. There is no rational reason for anyone to own anything but low-capacity hunting and target guns. Handguns and any high-capacity weapon (both which are designed primarily for killing people) should be outlawed. The risks of possessing a gun far outweigh any potential protective benefits. Defending against a criminal is an extremely rare need, and the idea that we must have guns to defend against tyranny is absurd and childish.
4. The fact that suicide and violent crime cannot be extinguished is no excuse for making both easier by making guns so easily available.
America right now is held hostage by what frankly are a bunch of regressed individuals who enjoy indulging in childish tough-guy fantasies. The second amendment now does nothing but protect the "right" of these regressed individuals to play with deadly toys. Some 35,000 lives should not be sacrificed to protect any such absurdly juvenile "right." It's well past time for Americans to grow up when it comes to guns.
11
1. They should do that with heroin as it has become really bad.....
2. Which other Rights do you wish to get rid of? How about the First? That causes an awful lot of problems.
3. It's called the Bill of Rights, not the Bill of Rational Reasons. A firearm is designed to send a projectile in a targeted direction. That direction is determined by a human, not the firearm. And then a human has to pull the trigger. The firearm won't do that itself.
People defend themselves with firearms all the time. Even the CDC reported at least 300,000 times a year. I guess it would just be better if those 300,000 were dead victims, right?
4. Actually, it was easier to buy a firearm not so long ago. You could have the mailman deliver you a firearm from Sears. Now that they have put all these laws in place, crime had gone up. As firearm laws are relaxed, crime has gone down to where we are at crime levels from the 50's, and more folks owning firearms legally. Explain how that works.
Ahh yes, now lets bash people as that is all you have, name calling. Congrats! Perhaps if folks like you actually matured to an adult, things would get better. You know, worry about the real things, like that there is no such thing as "gun violence", only human violence. You need to grow up. Perhaps if folks didn't sit around crying about firearms and actually did something to figure out how to fix the human violence problem a whole slew of problems would go away. But then, that would require hard work.
1
Thank you for exposing this appalling failure of the A.F.S.P to adhere to basic tenets of their own mission.
I imagine people of good will thought they could expand the group’s message by aligning with a group whose
very existence depends on the right to own guns, and then they failed to recognize they’d been co-opted.
If they don’t recognize it now and discontinue their partnership with the National Shooting Sports Foundation,
they can roundly be accused of encouraging more suicides than they prevent.
2
So- just 6% of suicides are with guns? Interesting!
Would like to see an article about suicide without using the word "guns".
How about it? Anybody care to do this? Lets call out the remaining 98% and get away from mindlessly blaming guns.
Here's how I see this. I'm 73-been around a while.
Suicide is a very personal decision, perhaps the most personal decision a person makes. I believe that they should be left alone. No person can completely know what another is feeling / thinking, and, therefore, is NOT in a position to dictate, much less, control.
On another level, with 7 billion people on this planet, the planet does NOT care if some people off themselves. Perhaps a few friends and relatives care, but no one else.
People want to wring their hands and cry over mass shootings, but, aside from their personal friends and relatives, these deaths are just numbers, and, again-the planet does not care.
Chuck - respectfully, I think you're missing the point. I don't advocate any authority abridging our access or confiscating our lethal weapons of (mostly) any sort.
However, what I've come to know from having a brother dead by suicide is that half or more of gun deaths on an annual basis are a result of lawful gun owners killing themselves with their guns.
No need to rant and rave about this Chuck. It's just a fact.
2
The image of a man (presumably trainer) behind a woman who looks focused and excited to shoot a gun is as much a disconnect from suicide prevention as could be. The image would make sense for the gun lobby's web page. Their propaganda is about making guns look like fun.
But am image of a person about to shoot a gun as an image for suicide prevention? Doesn't take many brain cells to see the gross and grotesque in that pairing.
What did the gun propagandists do to take over a suicide prevention organization? Why did they choose that organization to extend their propaganda? I ask because the answers are I am sure fascinating. Both in understanding how one organization takes over an organization that should at least be nominally opposed to former's goals, and 2), why a gun lobbyist sees suicide prevention as useful vehicle for propaganda.
The disconnect fits the current political climate. We live in a politics of disconnects. A psuedo-President who represents not the nation but himself. A wealthy egotist who made clear he really cares for no one else who sold himself as representing a certain portion of the population left behind. A EPA run by someone who wants to destroy it. A Congress that votes for bills that hurt the nation (but benefitting the international rich whose money makes them immune).
We live in a period of disconnect and propaganda. So long as we have a freee press at least the propaganda can always be shown for its lies.
4
If the goal is just to remove the majority of firearms from society as compared to aiding those who are prone to suicidal ideation, it is a lost cause.
That's the problem - the debate quickly drills down to 'ban all guns'. confiscate existing personally owned firearms, we cannot understand why anyone would have a firearm, etc.
That's what gun control actually means when you get to the core. So for the gun control groups, suicides are just a terrible PR ploy to that goal.
Unfettered access should be stopped - how? It would have to be by complete control and confiscation.
That will never happen. Better spend your time on preventive mental health that is has unfettered and easy access.
2
Here is another alternative. Respect a person's right to end their life. The decision is theirs, not yours. Offer them a humane way to go.
There is an iffy number of iffy "statistics," getting used here to make the very iffy claim that guns don't kill people, people kill people.
By the way, isn't the article's point that the NRA and its associates (by which I mean "minions") really shouldn't be spending a lot of that money it gets from gun-making corporations to silence dissent while pretending to "do something to help?"
There is a simple basic message, no matter how you feel about gun-control:
Overall, with current practices, the increased risk of suicide, by the gun-owner or a family member or friend, makes having a firearm far more likely to cause death or serious injury than to prevent it.
It is conceivable this could be changed by getting gun-owners to take extra security precautions, but the magnitude of the effect is so extreme that this is far from clear.
Here are a couple of useful links:
A page from Harvard on suicide and guns https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/
A Utah firearms instructor on guns and suicide
https://vimeo.com/176189702
1
The gun lobby has tainted our politics & many other institutions. Purchase of guns should be strictly regulated, & no one outside the military should have military style weapons. It's obvious to me that our murder rate would go down precipitously if that were the case. I also believe that people who want to end their own lives should be permitted to do so, by any means they choose as long as it does not endanger others.
2
Societies make cost/benefit decisions all the time. For example, after work at night it is likely that you relax with a good glass of wine. You are a lawyer and statistically speaking this is likely to be the case. Well, that alcoholic beverage you consume is leading to more deaths, more broken families and broken lives than guns ever will. But you don't get outraged over the deleterious effects of the alcohol you consume for one primary reason; you like it and/or its negative effects have never reached you personally. In the tragic case of your father this event has now brought one of societies costs re: gun ownership to the fore for you and suddenly you're now willing to infringe on many of your fellow citizen's conscious cost/benefit decisions around gun ownership. I don't know whether you are a gun owner or not, but my guess is that you are not. Assuming you don't own guns, and perhaps don't know many who do, it is easy for you (in light of the tragedy you have experienced) to dismiss the valid reasons that your fellow citizens would agree to permit gun ownership despite the fact that some deaths will occur. Try reading Gun Guys by Dan Baum to understand why good people don't view guns in the evil light that perhaps you view them in. I'm very sorry about your father, but I suspect that deep in your heart and mind is a conclusion that the only true solution to the "problem of guns in society" (if you can mobilize enough momentum) is to eventually ban them.
1
The only times I've contemplated buying a gun were during periods of severe depression. Thankfully in my state the laws make it impossible to get a gun quickly.
This is madness.
2
This editorial further increase my suspicion that the anti-gun forces want all guns banned, period. The truth, which seems not to matter to the anti-gun folks, is that many incidents of "gun violence" can be prevented by safe storage and handling of firearms and that any educational efforts in that direction might save lives. Sandy Hook, for example, could have been prevented if the firearms used had been properly secured, as they should have been, or perhaps stored outside the home of such a deeply disturbed individual.
Thank you for your well prepared and informed piece. Suicide by gun touched my life as well when my mother took one of my father's unsecured pistols and killed herself with it many years ago.
My father was an avid gun collector, dealer, shooter and hunter. We probably had close to 100 firearms in our house which, in itself, was his legal choice to make. That he neither took the time to properly secure them nor take any time to notice that his wife was in such a depressed and/or suicidal state makes no difference now, 45 years later.
That we can't look at the lesson learned, the message illustrated so painfully for an entire family in any meaningful way without incurring the wrath of the gun-nut class in inexcusable. I am in no way an advocate of gun control- I grew up an accomplished marksman familiar with the power and fury of guns- I am no pollyanna when it comes to firearms. However, when we are not even permitted to have an adult discussion about the risks of unchecked, unregulated gun ownership and the true dangers they have the potential of presenting in the hands of those who are not well then we are no longer well as a country.
One that considers these poor, lost souls the necessary collateral damage of a "free society" in service to a greedy, manipulative and powerfully lobbied firearms industry.
33
In September of this year my father took his life with a gun. While he had been struggling for a long time, had a history of police intervention with his suicide attempts, and had been in and out of hospital care for clinical depression, there are no regulations in place to prevent such a person from purchasing a handgun unless voluntarily or involuntarily committed by the state. Only then would such a history appear on his record when a background check was conducted. Because of this, he was still legally able to purchase a 38 special from an internet gun shop and take his own life.
Anyone who says stronger regulations should not be in place to prevent someone with my father’s history from buying a gun, is either a fool or a liar. The second amendment was not written to cover this type of evil and in order for our nation to progress, we must acknowledge and correct the laws that are actively aiding and abetting an industry whose money comes with the barbaric and very preventable loss of human lives.
33
I fully read the article, but was puzzled by so many comments about the NRA's "infiltration" and involvement in the A.F.S.P.
The article mentions the NRA but never indicated the NRA's involvement with the A.F.S.P. So I went back and re-read the section that mentioned the NRA. Sure enough, I saw the author's slight of hand. When I originally read the section, I easily understood the author was doing standard straw man, red meat work by mentioning the NRA. However, when I re-read the section after reading so many comments, I noticed just how skillful the author was in this misdirection. She clearly got many readers to believe the NRA is involved in the A.F.S.P. while not saying that. So she could hit the nerve, convince people of a falsehood, and deny doing so. Very skillful. Here's the section:
"The A.F.S.P. advocates “temporary” removal of firearms “during periods of increased risk of suicide” — yet it offers no guidance on how a civilian can legally remove a firearm from its owner. The dissonance is further heightened when gun owners hear from the other powerful voice in the room, the National Rifle Association, whose training materials state..."
Note the skillful metaphorical use of "in the room", inviting the reader to see the NRA sitting alongside the A.F.S.P. This is done after many paragraphs describing the partnership between the A.F.S.P. and the National Shooting Sports Foundation. So readers are perfectly primed, emotionally charged when they read the NRA mention.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the organization which IS partnered with the suicide prevention group, is the industry organization representing the interests of firearms manufacturers. Ironically, its headquarters is Newtown CT (made famous by the Sandy Hook massacre) and its head is a former executive at the firearms manufacturer Sturm Ruger. As a group their stated positions on issues such as assault weapons, open and concealed carry, and extended magazines are in lockstep with, and in some cases are even more extreme, than those of the NRA.
In the sentence referring to 'the other voice in the room' the author was clearly talking about the public forum of discussion, and nowhere did she imply that there was a physical, monetary or other direct connection with the NRA. So I'll say what she didn't; it doesn't matter whether it's the NSSF or the NRA, since at their heart they represent the gun lobby, and advocate for the same positions. To the extent that either of them have infiltrated and corrupted a group whose aim was to prevent needless suicides, just so they can steer the discussion away from the preventability of gun suicides, it's a story that should be told.
I am a gun owner, a collector and a long-time and current holder of a concealed carry permit, so I can hardly be classified as someone who is a 'grab-their-guns' extremist. Yet I see the positions of these supposed gun rights organizations as sociopathically blasé about preventable tragedy.
1
Thank you for your reply, VKG. There is some good information in your response that adds to the article and the discussion.
I disagree with your opinion that "it doesn't matter whether it's the NSSF or the NRA". The author appears to intentionally mislead readers and it shouldn't be excused simply because we may agree with some broader point.
But I also think we further muddy the waters and inhibit wise discussion by implicitly mixing the topics of gun violence (homicide) with suicide. Our objections to stances in support of assault weapons and extended magazines relate to the former. People who kill themselves with firearms are not doing so with an assault weapon fitted with an extended magazine. They aren't taking advantage of concealed carry laws. They generally use one shot from a simple firearm, usually out of public view.
(Also, I did clearly state that the term "in the room" was used metaphorically.)
Awful facts, great story.
The automobile and tobacco lobbies lurched through periods of needed governmental regulation in preceding decades such that cars are incredibly safe and tobacco use on our shores is no longer de rigueur and is declining.
So I ask the gun lobby, which is only interested in selling more more more to make their guns safer. Mandatory trigger locks and smart guns with palm and finger sensing triggers can be made. Gun manufacturers can contribute some of the profits to suicide prevention and diagnosis. You can do your part to make our society better. We are swimming in guns and it has to change. Person arsenals are UnAmerican.
Yes, suicides may not be prevented - but gun corporations can get ahead of the curve. Once an increasing number of politicians are murdered by nuts wielding ghost guns and plastic weapons, you'll see changes in the laws to reduce the carnage.
The difficult test for the altruist or suffering relative is to attend to their need to give help and find relief, without necessarily participating in the petty tyranny power trip behind PC liberal anti-gun groupthink. This is because the NRA picks up this liberal train of thought, labels it mob tyranny, and uses it effectively against rational gun opposition.
While people who consider gun owning can be convinced a gun is a dangerous object to have around, they cannot be convinced that they should be banned. Conversely people open to bans never consider owning a gun. Meanwhile in the middle people protective of civil rights who do not own guns are protective of the rights of people who do. So you have to be careful that trying to help your cause you do not wind up hurting it.
1
I am sorry for your loss. The gun industry has little or no interest in how people use their guns or who has access to them as their only interest is in selling them. Whatever the motivation of the AFSP to partner with the Mational Shooting Sports Foundation they clearly have abandoned their primary focus, preventing sucides by excluding gun control groups from participating in the dialogue.
The association should be sued in order to strip it of its credentials as its support of the gun industry is a conflict of interest that prevents it from achieving its mission.
This article offers an excellent cautionary tale to those involved with charitable organizations about the dangers of partnering with outside parties that then try to subvert the cause to serve another purpose. As far as preventing suicides go though, it becomes a little fuzzy. Depression is the cause of suicide, impulsive or not, and improving mental health care in this country should be the goal and focus of prevention efforts.
1
Although although Suicide is associated with mental illness, suicidal thoughts may arise independent of a psychiatric diagnosis. Suicide is a fatal effect of schizo-affective disorder > schizophrenia > depression, but there are a lot more people with clinical depression. When suicidal ideation moves to an urge to act, that urge typically lasts less than 72 hours. That is the critical time for interventionfor different methods and not surprisingly firearms are at the top at about 85%. Thus, preventing access to firearms reduces the likelyhood of success. The corruption of A.F.S.P. is shameful.
That said, I have three rifles and two handguns in my home. I live remote and if there is any kind of an emergency, it will be at least 45 min on our own. And from game cameras, I know that there are coyotes and at least one huge black bear on my property. Yes, when I walk down to the creek, I carry protection. When children come, everything is locked in an opaque cabinet behind a door. I know the risk to myself, but believe in my living situation that the risk/benefit ratio favors having the firearms.
I agree wholeheartedly that something has to be done about the easy access to guns, but that's not going to happen. Every time there is a mass shooting, Congress makes it even easier for people to have access to guns.
Since we can't expect anything to be done about guns, we need better mental health care. I was diagnosed with anxiety disorder and clinical depression and I have taken anti-anxiety medication and an anti-depressant for years. I also have several conditions which cause me a great deal of pain. Opioids did nothing for my pain and made me very sick, so I choose to smoke marijuana, which helps a lot. A couple of months ago I was drug tested, and since marijuana showed up I was summarily cut off of my anti-anxiety pills and my antidepressants. My depression and anxiety are getting much worse and I think about suicide every day. I have access to guns, but two things keep me from killing myself: the temporary euphoria I get from weed and the fact that I am the sole caregiver for my brother, who has Parkinson's. I will soldier on in my misery so that he doesn't wind up in a pesthole of a nursing home. The day may come however when I just can't take it anymore. Being a 24/7 caregiver, I am very lonely and depressed since I hardly get out of the house, and no one comes here anymore.
24
Carole,
Please get in touch with a local caregivers' organization. Here's the Web site for AARP's resources: https://www.aarp.org/caregiving/
Here's their support phone number: 10877-333-5885
They might have some help they can direct you to.
I once contacted the Connecticut chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving about a plan to open a casino near me. I was very concerned that the casino would contribute to drunk driving risks, since it would draw many people from long distances some who would likely drink. But MADD would not get involved on the casino issue. It was their position is they aren't against the sale of alcohol. They just want to promote responsible behavior.
The responsible thing for MADD to have done would have been to look at the DUI incidents near Connecticut's existing casinos (There is data) and raise some concerns and cautions. If the casino increases the risks of DUI accidents, what exactly is the point of arguing for responsible behavior?
But the state MADD did no such thing, and the state legislature approved the casino in East Windsor without considering whether it increased DUI risk. In fact, it blocked the town of East Windsor from holding a local referendum. It was one of the most shameful things ever done in this state.
I share the writer's frustration here and the problem she raises may be broader than most realize.
I don’t agree with your belief that madd should have come out against the casino. Doing so would have caused them more harm than good. Madd isn’t against gambling nor are they against restaurants and bars. You may have an issue with gambling—that it’s amoral or has zero societal benefits—but you can’t expect madd to hold they beliefs as well.
My sympathies on your loss. Gun violence comes in many forms and continues day after day to take a terrible toll in our country...
I'd like to take the opportunity to invite you to join us at Moms Demand Action. We're a grass roots, inclusive organization of mostly moms but also people from all walks of life, focused on one thing: education and gun sense legislation to reduce gun violence.
We've partnered with gun violence survivors, police officers, faith leaders, mayors, gun owners--anyone interested in listening and advancing the goals. You'll find us online and on Facebook. If there isn't a local group in your immediate area, start one. Get involved as much or as little as you have time for. You'll find people who are ready to listen, comfort, and take action.
I have a disease for which there is no cure. Even as write, it us relentlessly scrambling my brain. Indeed within 10 years I am likely to be in an vegetative state, unable to a) recognize anyone, b) converse or understand the speech of others, c) read or write or d) care for my most basic needs, forcing my family to spend what I saved so they would never have to face that same fate where the6 find themselves forced either into a nursing home or pay for my in-home longterm care 24 hours a day, all while they may eventually be subject to that same genetically passed-on disease that dooms me.
We cannot tell just it was that moved Ms. Dunkerly to wish her father had not taken his life. Was he mentally ill and, thus, suffering from a condition which might have been reversible? Or had he been diagnosed with an fatal affliction, no amount of money could have corrected?
To deny someone who is suffering the God-given right to make his own choice as to his fate would be wrong.
However — to allow an individual who is not competent to decide his fate — may well cross a moral boundary that I would have to concede places Ms. Dunkerly in a position where she may have hoped to have him safely cared for.
My family would struggle with my choice, but they would have had the opportunity to speak with me before I had to chose. Ms. Dunkerly apparently was denied that opportunity. It would seem her father may have denied her the opportunity to reason with him.
My heart goes out to her.
1
"The AFSP advocates 'temporary' removal of firearms 'during periods of increased risk of suicide'...”
This nonsense assumes episodes of acute depression are easily and accurately forecast - like the weather, only better. Nothing is further from the truth. In my own experience of struggling with depression, I'm fine about 96% of the time, really down but in control about 3.9%, and having the bottom fall out acutely 0.1% of the time, when it seems death would be welcomed.
It's difficult to convey how suddenly and unexpectedly the 'bottom falls out,' and I've spent a lot of time and effort with professionals learning to recognize and avoid pitfalls, but this remains an on-going challenge. I know that I dare not keep a gun around, but fortunately I'm not much inclined to anyway.
However devoted gun owners who suffer from depression are on the thinnest of ice. And as usual, the attitude of the NRA and its trade groups is to never, EVER ere on the side of caution. In the name of "freedom" (to kill), we always ere on the side of risk. And whether that risk is 1%, or 0.1% or even 0.001%, those rare times can and will come around.
But the NRA and the government it owns and controls cares not one iota for the loss of human life. Everyone's 'right to life' ends at the moment of birth.
5
Both my parents committed suicide, and my young first husband as well. For decades, suffering from these losses, I railed against guns, suicides, people who saw no hope in others, and so on. Now, at nearly 80, I have another viewpoint. I'm no less dismayed at suicide - it creates a life of pain and failure for the survivors. But life is hard and living it well is hard, and I now have more sympathy for those who fail at it. If my parents and husband had died of disease or accident, life would have still been hard for me and for my children. But we would not have that pain of having been abandoned and denied. The gun was deadly, yes, but my mother's long descent into death by alcoholism was no less painful to her survivors, no less enraging. So now I say, if all help fails, and someone you love kills him/herself, don't rail against guns. We need a new way to look at suicide. Until we get to that place in our culture, forgive yourself and be glad that person is no longer in pain. Go after guns - so many people are dying who do not want to be dead. Who could live well, raise children, make art, bring help and joy. Their lives have been stolen from them, they have been stolen from their families. And there are far too few preventive measures between them and death.
1
I am horrified by this article. I lost my sibling to suicide (though not due to guns) and have been a passionate supporter of AFSP. I have raised more than $25,000 for this organization and participated in many of its Overnight walks. I have always felt that AFSP was not as outspoken as it could be about gun control--one of the few suicide preventives shown to be effective--but to learn that it is actively allying itself with gun supporters and pushing out those lobbying for gun control is shocking and dismaying. I feel betrayed and also betrayed on behalf of my many friends and family members who have donated to support my efforts. To think that AFSP is engaging in policies that raise the risk of suicide and lifelong heartbreak for those left behind leaves me feeling sick.
47
The title of this op-ed is outrageous! Gun lobby is not hindering suicide prevention. A group focused on suicide prevention is avoiding gun control groups from talking about gun control - they are saying 'no' to being hijacked by a different agenda. How is the gun lobby hindering anything? Shame on you, again, NYTimes for ignoring the local facts and nuances to promote your agenda.
2
Ma, please re-read the last two paragraphs of the op-ed and you'll have your answer.
1
Your comment is clear as mud. The gun lobby does indeed hinder discussions and real research about gun violence, whether suicide or homicide. The NRA in particular is a pox on this country, and they truly silence anyone they can if it gets in the way of their lobbying, and partnership with weapon manufacturers. Shame on you - the author of this piece had a real life trauma of her father dying by suicide using a gun, and when she tried to participate in making people aware, a pro gun group came in, took over, and silenced them. This is a HUGE problem, and it is a public safety issue, NOT a second amendment issue. Have you ever been touched by suicide by gun? I would guess not judging by your lack of empathy. My condolences to the author.
2
"the National Shooting Sports Foundation that includes, “Is the partnership advocating no guns in the home?” The answer is a confounding “No.”
You may have missed that.
1
That's disgusting.
1
The NRA runs this country. Sickening, but true.
5
This is an overstatement. The polls are clear about reforming gun safety. We just have to vote for better people.
As long as it pays off to be GOP, so many will be spineless. They will be spineless or look at victims with contempt until it comes home to roost, like with drugs AND gun violence. Now people are looking at opioids racking the lives of rich and privileged.
When homegrown terrorists are shooting into concerts, elementary schools, and crowds, they tweet their little prayers, then go back to wearing their NRA hats and shirts. Meanwhile, they scream for randomly banning Muslim countries with little rationale. The Boston bombers were Russian immigrants, btw. Can you imagine banning Russians? Pakistanis? We might as well be repeatedly banging our head against a concrete wall, because it is a sickness!! America is sick.
2
The infiltration of the NRA into a suicide prevention group? Pure evil.
5
The article never mentioned the NRA.
What I meant to say is that the author never mentioned the NRA w.r.t. the A.F.S.P.
Seems to me that your board got bought off. I wonder what the Shooting Sports Foundation offered that brought this debacle forward?
4
I am confused about NYT's editorial stance on suicide. NYT is VERY enthusiastic about "suicide" when the victim is old or disabled (read inconvenient or boring to others) and when the (wink wink) "suicide" is carried out by medical "professionals". But when the victim makes the decision on their own and indisputably ends their life on their terms, suddenly NYT is against it. Why? Because it gives them a chance to bash the NRA?
1
The NRA has blood on its hands. They are despicable and nothing but gun salesman.
4
My father committed suicide at 74 using a bottle of Seconals that had been in my grandmother and cousins apartment since the 1970s. So much for the pharmaceutical industries ploy to get us to throw out medication after a year - many work for a very, very long time.
People who are suicidal or severely depressed show signs for years that can go unnoticed. Having guns in the home with someone suffering from depression or mental illness is a time bomb just waiting to be detonated.
The gun lobby, the NRA and its counterparts, do not care if people kill themselves or others with guns. All they care about is sales and eliminating any sane restrictions on gun control. If the gun lobby and our elected leaders gave a damn about people they would have a national program on the safe storage and use of hand guns and also a segment on keeping guns out of the homes of potential suicides or others who are mentally ill. Period.
Remember the 20-something who walked into Sandy Hook elementary school and other incidents where guns were kept loaded and with open access to those in the home? He showed signs of mental illness for years. Simply put, carnage is ignored because it reduces access and sales. It's all about money period.
What has happened in this country is a national disgrace. Suicide is just a piece of a much bigger problem. I empathize with the writer. But until we do better as a nation and become sane like every other developed society it's not going to change.
2
Liberal democrats are consistently proponents of assisted suicide or putting it another way, being able to manage ones own death. Why would a liberal democrat have any desire to thwart another persons wishes?
I’m a liberal Democrat and I am not a proponent of assisted suicide. And I am a proponent of strong control laws. So be careful with your generalizations.
I think the stat that 6% of suicide attempts are by gun and 82% of suicide deaths are by gun is quite telling. I have an ongoing discussion with a gun nut friend, he will want to know where the stat comes from and will not find "The New York Times" authoritative. Perhaps you can revise the article with a reference ?
1
You're "nut" friend is right to be skeptical about motivated media outlets, the NYT, included. The NYT is not a primary source for such statistics. Indeed, most journalism consists of establishing narrative and then seeking out (and massaging) conforming statistics to drop into the article.
You and your "nut" friend are free to seek out and discuss real research conducted by unmotivated professionals.
Since you apparently apparently (and correctly) like to see responsible sourcing for general statements based on studies done by reputable authorities, perhaps you would like to justify your own statement about journalism in your first paragraph in accordance with the standards you embrace? Unless, of course, you are referring to Fox “news”, in which case we have no disagreement.
What makes this opinion writer such an expert in suicide-by-gun prevention? What makes the "walk co-chairwoman, a vocal advocate who had also lost a family member to suicide by firearm" an expert in suicide prevention?
A common experience in having a member of a family commit suicide by gun?
I don't doubt that this is a horrible experience. I have seen the consequences. I've been there when a person put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger, and the effect it has on the witnesses. I've wrapped the bodies of those who committed suicide and I have talked to the people who failed to commit suicide. I've offered a chair to the mother whose son shot himself in the head with a .357. She wanted to sit with her son as he died, his head swollen the size of a basket ball, blue and purple. He was the cousin of the girl I thought I would marry.
Suicide is a horrible, horrible experience for the surviving family, but the author of this accusation, published in the New York Times, has done a severe disservice to the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. It's also a disservice to the reading public who will believe her misguided, partisan propaganda.
The NSSF has distributed more than 37 Million gun locks as part of its comprehensive safety programs, just for an example.
They don't do it her way so she writes this righteous screed.
Although you’ve denounced this article, nothing you write actually refutes it.
How do you refute an opinion?
What makes her an expert? The first question I asked. I'm more of an expert than she is. I actually prevented my father from shooting himself with his gun. I ground off the firing pin. It was completely undetectable.
She say's these associations should do this and do that. They should say this and not ignore that, Blah, Blah. What are her qualifications on the matter? Her victimhood and righteous indignation is her qualification.
It's the writer who is getting political with gun safety. What has she done in regard to gun safety? Went on a march, raised some money ($1000). Look up the NSSF on their website and the safety programs they have, which have been in effect for years. How do you prove that you prevented a death with a gun lock?
What is the writer's purpose anyway? Does she want to destroy the Foundation's efforts to prevent gun deaths? Demonize them in the eyes of the public, because they don't do what she says?
And then she says this: "That the A.F.S.P. seems willing to sacrifice these people with a deceptive partnership is appalling and a betrayal of the memory of my father."
I don't understand this logic at all. What has the A.F.S.P. got to do with the memory of her father? Did he work for them? Did he donate a huge sum of money. Did he establish that foundation? The memory of her father is hers. No one is going betray that memory but her.
Not wanting to live in a house with a gun (in this case, a pistol) was a factor in ending my marriage. My ex-husband (who had been raised in a gun culture including a father who owned a pistol with a silencer that he used to kill grey squirrels---no joke!) and gave up guns when he embraced my faith and joined my people suddenly hit middle age and decided he wanted guns back in his life. I exited and after the divorce, he got his guns.
Five years later, he nearly shot his fingers off while messing with his pistol (I never learned the full story). He was lucky and he didn't lose any digits but it took another 10 years for him to realize that maybe the whole gun thing wasn't such a great idea and another five years after that for him to give up all his guns (unknown number but more than three). He was never suicidal but friends remarked that they never knew if he was going to blow off an appendage after the finger incident.
I never asked him how he felt about the NRA (he did tell me that as a child he remembered that they were active in gun safety classes) but now he agrees that they are more interested in pushing gun ownership than being concerned about who actually owns guns (responsible? mature enough? sane?) and whether they are trained in safe and proper usage (such as at a firing range).
2
Gotta love how gun cranks love the 2nd but hate the First amendment. So
Un-American.
2
Guns are just another excuse for endless fundraising to never solve a problem in this ridiculous country.
1
Death courtesy of the NRA.
1
The NRA, gun lobby and manufacturers, and individuals like Trump, do not give a damn about Americans or their safety, lives or environment they live in. So for all you voters out there who think that Trump is going to "Make America Great Again", just realize it cannot be great without "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness".
Guns deny Life, we are not free if we have mentally disturbed and worse citizens walking around with guns, and we cannot be Happy if we are under constant threat. Guns are our drones. There is always a threat of instant death everywhere.
1
If Americans cared about the suffering of the suicidal, they would not have spent 40 years dismantling the psychiatric care system. Suicide prevention without treatment of depression is a sentence to a life in Hell.
2
Nothing demonstrates the contempt of the US for its own citizens more convincingly than the ludicrous respect accorded to paranoid schizophrenics who claim they need guns to shoot other citizens.
2
Well, i understand the huge loss represented in a suicide. I lost my son 18 months ago and, till now, i'm asking myself if i could have done something to prevent this to hapens.
It deeply hurts but the answer is always "nothing"! I still think that we could do something, and i will always try to find a way to make this prevention, even geting the same answer.
It is a nice gesture to run an association like A.F.S.P. and i would like to receive more information from that association.
My son killed himself with no aparently special reason, using a rope and i believe that he would do it equally whit a gun, a jump from a high place or whatever other thing or method. During this months i have learned that a suicide would not be prevented after decided. Theres no option for us to prevent this physically, because guns, gas, pills, ropes, cars, high places and other potencially dangerous places and things will always be with us. The problem, i mean the main problem, is to stay away of a nice contact and a good human relationship. Probably this would help to prevent suicide. Anyway i think (i said i think) i had a nice relation with my son, and it has'nt work.
I'm still learning about suicide, without major conclusions till now.
I hope i had contributed here with my oppinion. I'm Brazilian and i think that this subject is not different all over the world, regardless of culture, faith or legislation.
Thanks for reading. Send me info about the A.F.S.P.
Armando D. Mosna
8
What we need is an organization as big or bigger than the NRA to influence the cowards in Congress. Where do I sign up?
6
So....how about you support screening of individuals with ANY medical history relating to suicide risk - say, any psychiatric, pharmacological or "observed" indications - and bar those citizens from: owning weapons, high-strength rope, cutlery, plastic bags and painkillers. Of course then, this must also apply to any household members, or relatives, with access to these banned objects because obviously they could simply provide the at-risk individual with them. Simple, right? And of course, idiotic. Because people seriously intent on taking their own lives find a way to do so - including defenestration or jumping onto RR tracks - and short of institutionalization, absolute prevention is as unattainable as truth in politics.
2
Absolute prevention is unattainable. No one is suggesting it, but it still remains a goal. Nevertheless, most attempts at suicide (without a gun) fail and many never succeed. Suicide is frequently an impulsive decision, a person crying out for help. As the author points out, suicide attempts are few, but over 80% of them are successful. It may have been an impulsive act, but it is one that turns fatal.
1
All your points are irrelevant to the topic at hand. The author is not suggesting that there IS a way to stop all suicides, she's pointing out an obvious way to prevent MANY suicides. Try to understand the figures, nearly half of suicides are by firearm while only 6% of attempts involve firearms. Gun suicide attempts are more than 80% successful. I'll add one, the majority of people who survive a suicide attempt never try again. The author does not suggest banning anything. she suggests common sense prevention.
Gun restrictions work everywhere they have been tried & they are fully Constitutional.
Anything else said is a lie.
2
I'm very sorry for your loss. The gun lobby is a humanitarian abomination. Its mission and its supporters are pure evil and darkness fueled by ignorance, fear and greed.
4
Had it not occurred to anyone at the Suicide Prevention organization that the National Shooting Sports organization has its headquarters in Newtown Connecticut?
Yes! THAT Newtown.
It is time for the gun lobby to go the next step: lobby Congress to make machine guns legal and then add hand grenades and grenade launchers...what better way for each US citizen to defend itself against government tyranny...
Why stop there? The Second Amendment guarantees the right to "bear arms," according to the NRA reading of it. Nuclear warheads are arms. Tanks are arms. Since they are so opposed to drawing any sort of a line when it comes to guns, why are they drawing the line at guns? Personal arsenals for all!
The cancer of gun violence grows like a deadly tumor, and people applaud. Insane.
3
Who is applauding?
1
Weird that liberal commenters cry out for right to die laws and assisted suicide allowances until a person exercises that right to die by using a gun.
Who determines which adult suicides are ok and which are not?
1
The bottom line to preventing gun control and the NRA is money and politics, when that stops, then you will accomplish something!
4
Outrageous!! Outrageous!! Outrageous!!
Push back hard with moral certainty - this is a worthy target.
4
As the AFSP owned your father nothing, you have no right to make claims on them concerning your father. If you have an inkling you are somehow responsible for your father's death, which seems the case, say so. You cannot look strictly to outside organizations for catharsis within your own self.
1
I'm surprised the "gun lobby" doesn't have a how-to web page. Maybe they do. Anything for a buck.
A.F.S.P seems to have sold out. Shameful!
Right wingers get all "pro-choice" as long as it is about the choice of shooting yourself in the head. All the "pro-life" rhetoric takes a backseat when it threatens their precious, precious shooting things. Their hypocrisy is only exceeded by their callous and brutal selfishness. Just nasty people.
5
The discussion needs far more stats than happen here. I have never felt a suicidal urge from birth til now and I'm sure there are many such people. I live alone and had a burglar break in in a city that has the murder rate of Haiti...c.11 per 100,000 despite the USA averaging c. 4.7 per 100,000.
I fought the guy out on the street but had to watch his hands constantly in case he went for a gun. I retrieved my things after temporarily subduing him. I couldn't hold him for police because he may have had an armed friend waiting in a car. A black good Samaritan in this city got killed that way. My thug said he'd be back for me with a pistol.
I now have motion detectors at night and two loaded shotguns in house but no shell in the barrel until I rack them...which can't happen accidentally. Safes are relevant if one lives with others only. The police in the USA will never conduct mass searches for guns in the heavy crime districts. Never. Ergo our strong search laws which protect criminals also...are one reason I have guns. No one is searching my enemies....and if we can't stop weekly drug shipments from Sinaloa Mexico, gun laws will not stop one street thug from getting a gun....not one. If you live in suburbia, you can afford liberalism until...evil enters your town. Then you'll change.
> The police in the USA will never conduct mass searches for guns in the heavy crime districts.
They were doing that in high-crime areas of NYC where handguns are illegal. And crime went down.
Then a liberal judge prevented them from continuing to do that. And crime went up.
What good are laws against handguns if only the law-abiding will give their guns up?
i once knew a man whose guns were removed by the police when he was drunk. They were given to a family member to hold, but he eventually got them back. And killed himself. His drinking and his depression were probably connected. His family will never be the same.
Me, I won't own a gun because the newspaper headlines after I killed myself would be so embarrassing--"Woman on antidepressants buys gun, shoots self." How stupid would that be?
The nytimes has taken up another banner to keep the Democrats out of office for the new year: gun control. Putting its efforts into prosecution of drug company executives who push opioids on the masses (stop laughing about ignorant whites because it’s getting into black communities too) where it could prevent more suicides. And how are those shares in those medically weighted mutual funds doing? Good for you!
I have to question the twisted logic that condones legal suicide when lawyers, doctors and courts give their sanitized approval of that misery and wants to take a persons right to own a firearm because of the false belief they can predict a persons future behavior. Some people definetly shouldn’t own firearms as they are a proven danger to themselves. Otherwise you shouldn’t have the power to decide if you think gun ownership is a mental illness in its self. As I suspect most of you do.
1
The NRA has become too big and too powerful for its own good. It has turned into a Frankenstein monster, no thanks to lobbyists, and the misguided believers of the Second Amendment.
Anytime something resembling sanity, common sense and "the right thing to do" is hindered by the propaganda by Wayne LaPierre and his ilk.
In an unrelated context, a woman named Susan Powter was responsible for a mantra, "Stop the Madness."
It should apply, and in spades, to guns.
2
How much money is the NSSF giving to the suicide group? Does anyone know?
There's a high suicide rate among gun owners. Apparently their professed "self-defense" reasons for owning as many guns as possible doesn't protect them from their inner demons. What a way to live and die!
Society must be protected from these sociopaths.
If gun owners were required to be members of a “well regulated militia”, then they could watch for suicidal tendencies in each other and prevent such tragedies. The wisdom of the founders is being perverted for profits.
5
More importantly, the well-regulators of the government can watch over the entire militia and prevent it from becoming a suicide pact—or a religious or Nazi terror cell.
A well regulated militia stored its arms in armories in colonial times.
To the commenters claiming suicides would be unaffected by lack of access to guns, which part of this author's well-presented "documented higher risk" did you not understand?
11
We can find any statistic we need to butress our arguments. Cherry picking is a tried and true method by posters and the NYT editorial staff to present their slanted arguments on a number of issues. For instance, I take it Fox Nes statistics wouldn't fly in your book, so why would these?
@virginiadude...the quote is from a medical study in Oxford Academic. the NYT documents there stats, unlike Foxnews.
From Psychology Today last year:
"There is no relation between suicide rate and gun ownership rates around the world. According to the 2016 World Health Statistics report, (2) suicide rates in the four countries cited as having restrictive gun control laws have suicide rates that are comparable to that in the U. S.: Australia, 11.6, Canada, 11.4, France, 15.8, UK, 7.0, and USA 13.7 suicides/100,000. By comparison, Japan has among the highest suicide rates in the world, 23.1/100,000, but gun ownership is extremely rare, 0.6 guns/100 people.
Suicide is a mental health issue. "
Americans love guns. Many of our long held myths lead us to individualism at the expense of the common good, and guns are the ultimate expression of individualism. With a gun I can decide if you live or die if you threaten my individuality.
The NRA is merely the marketing arm of the gun industry, pump up fear and individualism to sell more guns. Guns equal freedom and self expression.
We are all victims of our long held myths, the tall dark stranger administering frontier justice in an old western, Dirty Harry administering street justice to some "punk".
If we cannot come to our senses on guns after instances like Sandy Hook, we will not come to our senses because of suicide.
50
Your point is a huge issue that is too frequently not addressed: the American relationship with guns is steeped in a mythology that has very little to do with the Second Amendment or self-protection.
If it were simply a rational argument, the fact that it is more dangerous to live in a household with a gun than without one would be extremely persuasive. Women are more likely to be killed in a home with a gun, regardless of a history of relationship abuse. The same goes for children. Suicide attempts are more likely to be successful. Guns increase your risk of death.
These facts fail to persuade because of the emotional and psychological pull of America’s romance with guns. The mythology of cowboys, pioneers, militias, the “good guys with guns,” has never been about self-preservation - no one is so passionate about owning shields. It’s the ability to take life, to inspire fear - there is a power inherent to holding a firearm. The toxic masculinity that enshrines this kind of power is seen in every aspect of the GOP - denying LGBTQ rights, propping up sexual assailants, attacking women’s rights, marginalizing minorities, even a tax plan meant to enrich the powerful and further impoverish the powerless. It’s long past time to make a change and let some common sense reign.
3
There's no 'mere' about it. The job of the NRA is to pump up sales for the fire arms industry. In order to do that it bribes politicians from enacting even the most obviously necessary gun laws.
3
Have you checked the number of NRA members lately? It's about 5m. Can't we find 5,000,000 thinking intelligent gun control people in this country to join up and do a proxy fight, throw the leader out & get rid of their influence? The bulk of existing members already support reasonable control. Like yeah, we really need fully automatic weapons on the loose.
Just seems a takeover should be possible.
11
Once again, the antigun crowd displays its lack of knowledge when it coms to guns. Automatic weapons are rare and not sold int he US. Walk into any Bass pro or Walmart and tell them to sell you a machine gun (which is what an automatic rifle is). After they start laughimg, they'll tell you only semiautomatic guns are available; one trigger pull, one bullet. Liberal posters love to obfuscate.
1
If a person wants to end their own life, what possible reason could anyone have to stop them? If I don't control the conditions of my own existence, what freedom do I have? It's tragic that we live in a country where decent mental health care is difficult to obtain and prohibitively expensive, AND where reasonable access to humane medically assisted suicide is almost nonexistent. I frankly am considering buying a handgun simply because of this conundrum. Men in my family tend to die slowly and miserably of chronic diseases, for which modern medicine has little to offer in the way of palliative or curative care. I deserve to have some control over how poor my quality of life becomes before I can terminate it.
10
By making it fast and easy to kill oneself, guns increase the risk of a successfully completed suicide substantially. Assisted dying or euthanasia are quite different than suicide due to, e.g., a temporary flare-up in depression.
15
Nowhere is "free exercise of religion" more relevant than how we adjust to death.
You open with a painful lament, then decry the lack of mental health help, pretending to offer wisdom what you offer is pitiable stress. This might considered honorable stoicism, if you kept it to yourself. The irony is there, but that is all.
As a society, we diligently work to solve all social issues which endanger us (look at the resources being marshaled toward opioids and texting while driving for e.g.). Guns are the sole outlier. And the cost in lives and money is literally incalculable because the CDC is hamstrung by Congress to fully research it. Ask yourself why and work to change it. We can have gun possession and gun safety just as we have cars and air bags.
11
The US finds many different ways to subtly suggest that people drop dead.
For what it's worth I can say only this:
At a time of then-seemingly insurmountable time of grief in my life a few years ago, had there been a handgun in my house, I would, without doubt, have taken my own life.
67
So you say, and it's popular to say or think that. But you don't know. In the struggle with self destruction, the lack of a real means gives rise to fantasy. Talk is cheap and the proof of the suicide pudding is in the fact that you are alive now.
1
Exactly. Yet it seems the gun manufacturer's would prefer to sell the gun than to save a life. It is that simple.
1
What about slitting one's wrist with a sharp knife & bleeding out. That's what I would do if I wanted to end the pain permanently.
1
I have never owned a gun, and I hope I am never so distrustful of my fellow human beings that I think I have to own a gun to "protect myself." A gun in a house, especially an unsecured gun, is a tragedy waiting to happen.
15
Are you joking? Distrustful of fellow human beings? People kill, maim, and otherwise harm others everyday. Protecting yourself from others is not being distrusting in your fellow humans. It is being prudent and caring for your life and for the lives of your love ones.
1
Until that fellow human being decides they want to hurt you or yours and you have no means to protect yourself. That is a tragedy waiting to happen and why I'll keep my firearms.
1
"... volunteers who wanted to talk about the documented higher risk for suicide deaths for those who keep firearms in the home ..."
Suicide is highly correlated with gender and culture. Men commit suicide at at least three times the rate of women; Korea and Japan, despite being nearly gun-free, have far higher suicide rates than the US or Europe.
It isn't correlated with firearm ownership. Australia and England went through gun confiscations, without any discernible impact on suicide rates.
Seems pretty clear that when it comes to suicide, guns are incidental, not instrumental. People who are determined to kill themselves will find a way.
5
Guns are a "sure-fire" (pun intended), reliable and relatively quick means of suicide, and so much more! Mad at your spouse or neighbor? What better way to show that you mean business! Hear a noise outside your door at night? Don't put yourself at risk, just shoot right through the door! Kids shoot themselves or each other? They should know better.
There may be reasons unrelated to gun ownership why suicide rates are higher in one culture than another. It is however true that inside the US the risk of a successful suicide attempt goes up if there is a gun in the home.
These other cultures could very well have higher suicide rates if guns were easier to obtain.
1
What "seems pretty clear" to you is not supported by any actual evidence.
The A.F.S.P stated interest is suicide prevention for "low information gun owners". Your passion for gun free homes puts you at odds with the realistic and laudable goals of the organization for people who already own firearms.
Newly licensed teenage drivers and their friends die in automobile accidents at an alarming rate. I advocate for better driver education. You essentially advocate they not own cars and take the bus. Then you wonder why car companies do not support your ideas.
Firearms are not the cause of suicide. Our suicide rate is about average for the world. Japan and South Korea, have about double our suicide rate, with very few firearms used. Other methods are effective.
3
Did it occur to you that there was good REASON that they wanted to stop talking about "gun control" as a path to suicide prevention? This is empirically demonstrable; a landmark study in the 1970s showed that, if a gun is unavailable, a suicidal person will simply choose another method. Unless you propose to "control" electrical extension cords, I'm afraid gun control as a method of suicide prevention is doomed to failure. It also doesn't cut to the core of WHY people commit suicide. Focus on guns is a distraction.
4
Historical note: many great people, famously Lincoln, Freud, and Mark Twain, experienced profound depressions that did not result in suicide.
Impulses to suicide are symptoms of depression, and abate as the episode passes or responds to treatment, as I know first-hand.
6
It is notable that lawsuits by individuals and eventually by states proved effective against for-profit tobacco companies' lies. In this case, however, the lies and distortions of non-profit pro-gun organizations cause misery, pain, deaths, even endanger police, yet seem to go unchallenged in the courts.
In this case the anti-suicide organization should be sued for dereliction of its publicly filed mission, and thus fund-raising under false pretenses.
3
There are good reasons for organizations to stay very focused on their missions. "Mission creep" spreads resources thinner, dulls impact, and can cause organizational conflict and confusion. This is the case even when the added goals are "(inter)related".
In this particular case, the organization should be focused on reaching - and saving - as many people as it can. It already faces major hurdles, as the author knows. By entangling itself with a gun control position, it guarantees to be "tuned out" by a large segment of society.
I support the AFSP's strict focus on the mission to prevent suicide. Like the author, I disagree with their decision to partner with the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
1
The right to bear arms is sacred, embedded in our bill of rights along with the freedom of religion, the freedom of speech, and the freedom not to be enslaved. I would no sooner take away my neighbors gun than insist he take for himself my religion or enslave his neighbor to harvest his cotton. The leftists would limit our gun rights to advance their pro government socialist agenda.
6
Nowhere in this piece did I hear anything about taking away people’s second amendment rights.
The issue is that a suicide prevention organization teamed up with a pro-gun group in the name of “education” and now is unwilling to talk about the increased risk that having a firearm in the house brings with it.
I don’t have an issue with gun ownership. I don’t however feel that my kids would be safer if I had a gun in the house or if their teachers or administrators were bringing guns into their school - at this point school is the safest place for them to be regardless of the high profile mass shootings that have occurred and I really don’t believe that bringing guns into their school would improve that. I also don’t believe I would be safer if everyone around me was carrying a gun even though there would be some good guys with guns in the crowd.
Still, if you feel safer with a gun in your home, you have every right to keep one. You should also have the information to make an informed decision and to understand the risks and that is the point, I believe, of this piece.
What I do take issue with is the influence the gun lobby has in Congress (and in the minds, it seems, of many gun owners) where we can’t even keep a national database on gun violence. Where keeping statistics and where a suicide prevention organization’s ability to provide information on risks of having firearms in the home becomes a socialist threat.
A few years ago my brother-in-law, a troubled alcoholic, got drunk and got in a verbal fight with his wife. She rightfully asked him to leave the house as he was scaring the kids. In a moment of weakness I will never understand, he went to one of our local Austin Texas gun shops and walked out a few minutes later with a pistol. There was no mandatory waiting period. He must have reeked of alcohol but that didn't stop them from selling to him. He walked a few blocks down the street and killed himself behind a dumpster.
Citizens like myself are not asking to unilaterally take away your neighbors gun as you so crudely stated. We would simply like the same precautions made as when someone gets a driving license or requests a controlled pain medication like Vicodin. There is a process to evaluate the persons fitness for receiving the license, drug... or gun.
And as for constitutional rights? Remember government has been enshrined with the ability to limit or even take rights away from its citizens. Convicts cannot vote while incarcerated. Drunk drivers lose their license. Pedophiles have to register their residence and advise neighbors.
You are correct that you have a right to own a gun. And my brother-in-law had a right to live. If even one safeguard had been in place to slow down his purchase of that gun, he may not have committed suicide that night.
Guns kill people. People kill themselves with guns. A suicide prevention group should not be swayed by the gun lobby.
What about opiates? Is the APA lobby hindering suicide prevention on a much larger scale?
I agree there should be stricter gun control but while I can understand Ms. Dunkerly´s attitude towards her father´s suicide I would wish that an adult´s decision about his or her life could be respected.
2
By way of comparison - the rate of ownership of long guns in Canada is similar to the USA. We have a likely higher percentage of sport hunters. However, regulations make it extremely difficult to purchase a handgun and ownership rates are much lower.
We do however have far more robust regulations regarding transport and storage of both firearms and ammunition. All firearms must be transported in a gun case, unloaded. Ammunition must be similarly secured. Open carry is only permitted while hunting in rural or wilderness areas. Open carry of any weapon, especially a handgun, and especially in an urban area, will get you immediately arrested.
Here’s the result - we have a dramatically lower rate of firearm deaths, including suicide by gun.
My late brother was an emergency physician who worked in Toronto, Washington, and Philadelphia. I once asked him if easy access to guns made a difference between working in Canada and the USA. After rolling his eyes at my naïveté, he said that the cases he saw in both countries were remarkably similar - animal attacks, accidents, assaults, and suicide attempts looked much the same in all three cities. Then, he said, there was about 50% more traffic in the US emergency wards - patients presenting with gunshot wounds.
It’s simple - sensible gun controls work.
Canada is a safer place to live than the USA because they do.
18
Canada has a similar suicide rate 10.4/100,000 people vs 12.6/100,000 in the USA.
Shootings in US cities are mostly drug and gang related shootings of young Black and Latino men by other young Black and Latino men.
Canadians suffer significantly less sunburn then Floridians but such a comparison is equally pointless.
1
This is disgusting. I am continually amazed that everything, even an organization that starts off with good intentions, can be linked to a larger issue. I listened an public radio interview with a gun store owner who said he sold a gun to a women who promptly shot herself in the back parking lot of the store. The worst part was she had told the owner her plan. Impulsive suicides by firearm ARE PREVENTABLE. Thank you to Ms. Dunkerly for bringing attention to this issue.
11
How do you know the suicide was impulsive?
Why do people feel that they need guns? Because they are afraid. And that fear has become like an infectious diseease among those who lack the personal integrity to recognize those fears as something not to be cultivated, but rather disolved, with acts of courageous kindness to their fellow humans. The irrational fears of the cowardly gun lobby- the NRA- have destroyed the Freedom that we once cherished. We're no longer safe in public spaces thanks to those fearful cowards.
8
Why the need for smoke detectos and fire extinguishers in the home? Seatbelts and airbags in the car? Fire and flood insurance on your home? Trip insurance? A gun in the home or on a person licensed to have one is just another form of insurance, not fear. I'd rather have a fire extinguisher, smoke detector, gun, and other tools in my home just in case I should need it. No fear.
The vast majority of people do not need guns. However as someone who grew up in a rural areas out west, I can attest to the fact that some people do indeed need guns. When you live in such an area, sometimes 25 miles or more from the next household, a shotgun is simply a necessary tool. It's a tool you will may need in an encounter with one of the many non-humans who live nearby.
More remarkably, the level of fear seems to have risen as most objective indicators of danger like violent crime rates have fallen consistently for decades. These fears are fed by the media, by unscrupulous politicians and businesses, and by the gun lobby itself.
The number of murders on television has always far exceeded their actual prevalence.
The Bene Gesserit maxim "fear is the mind-kller" from the novel Dune seems pretty applicable to those who think they need a gun in the home to protect themselves from dangerous criminals. Of course, the statistics show that the people most likely to be shot by those guns are family members and friends.
Thank you for your vigilant expose. What a maddeningly shameful and insidious story of big gun money and its treacherous and underhanded ways of directing political decisions. How they can sneak into suicide prevention leaves me breathless.
9
It seems to me that to be safe you would have to answer the door with a gun in your hand. That is how the whole home protection thing is a sick joke.
3
Armed Americans protect themselves frequently. Articles compiled at site below:
https://www.americanrifleman.org/the-armed-citizen
1
I felt bad reading this. I am sorry for the loss of your father.
I read many of the comments as well, arguing both sides.
I would think, if you have a suicidal or depressed person in your home, that you would lock up firearms and ammunition. Suicide is often an impulsive act, and if someone swallows pills or other substances, they might be saved. If you have ever witnessed the carnage of someone who has killed themselves by firearm, you would see how devastating this is. Most shoot themselves in the head or through the mouth upwards. When I worked as an RN in the ER many decades ago, a young man came in with a fatal gun shot wound to the head, self inflicted. I still remember it to this day. His brain wa gone, but his heart was still beating, so they brought him in. We had to fill his head with gauze and wrap it so his parents could come in. It was awful.
If you think this is just he way it is, you are deluding yourself. Guns are lethal, so lock them up. You say they may find another way to kill themselves, and that may be true. But why make it easier for someone? Why?
8
Why prevent someone from killing themselves? Because it bothers those left behind? No where is there a concern for the suicidal person.
1
In 2003, my then 72-year old father shot himself in the chest, and died alone in his recliner.
In the years prior to his Suicide, his days were consumed by watching Fox News and listening to Rush Limbaugh. His views became twisted and dark. I don’t know when he acquired the pistol, but if that gun were not in the house when his dark thoughts intruded, he might have followed through with his scheduled VA mental health visit, and maybe gotten help in managing his dark thoughts.
In the aftermath, my research informed me that Suicide is a leading cause of death in men over 65. Polite company does not speak of this.
33
Suicide is 11th cause of death over 65 well below Heart disease, Cancer and Chronic lower respiratory disease. And while some suicides involve firearms, many others are at the hand of prescription drug over dose. I distrust anecdotal information offered on the internet which may or may not be true. However taking your tale at face value your father died because of the existence of a TV in the house. Had the obvious instrument of death been taken away he might have lived to a ripe old age. I would add that I'm over 72 have watch fox, msnbc, can and have firearms in my home and a concealed concealed carry permit. I routinely visit the range to keep my skills honed and enjoy competing at the local skeet/ Trap range with equally old farts. It is my way of keeping my mind active and away from thoughts of suicide. I am sorry for your loss.
It is disaapointing that a suicide prevention group would associate itself with a gun lobby org and compromise its core mission. When my mom died recently, the first thing I did was have direct yet gentle discussion with my dad about his grief and the gun he had in the house. He recognized that, yes, the gun might become a risk for him in the coming months of being alone and that it was time to get rid of it. He took it to a gun shop the next day and sold it. Part of his insight may have come from the fact that one of his children nearly became a victim of gun violence during a divorce at the hands of her now ex- husband who owned guns. At that time, everyone ignored the risk despite obvious warning signs.
13
When you sell a gun, it becomes somebody else's McGuffin.
The only time I had occasion to dispose of one, I threw it into a lake.
It makes me sad to say this but I regard the US to be a lost country in more ways than I can count, but I can count a few:
-Our life expectancy is going down--not a blip--because Congress does absolutely nothing while opiate manufacturers rake in the cash
-Virtually all of the things that make society valuable--including disease prevention, maintenance of infrastructure, and international diplomacy--are either disappearing or under direct attack.
-An ex-army guy with a history of domestic violence walks into a church in Texas with a semi-automatic and kills as many people as he can; politicians say to survivors, "Your in our thoughts and prayers..." and then we forget about the whole thing, because politicians in the US are as terrified of NRA as the GOP is of Trump.
Will things ever improve? I don't know, but our society as a whole seems more or less comfortable with things getting much worse, so concepts like talking about suicide prevention and gun control in the same sentence are out of the question.
18
It seems illogical and impossible that a suicide prevention group would partner with a gun-rights organization, but we live in strange times, and what was abnormal in the past has become normal and acceptable. Gun rights organizations have no interest in saving lives or reducing gun violence. Their reason for existence is to get more guns into the hands of more people. It's a cynical move for them to partner with a suicide-prevention group, but an understandable one, given their goals. What's maddening and almost unbelievable is that the A.F. S. P. would align themselves with a pro-gun group, given the number of suicides committed with guns. But, as I mentioned, we are living in strange times and the unthinkable has become commonplace.
9
Maybe not so illogical and impossible. Greed never sleeps. Great example of how it works.
A gun forum had a lively discussion immediately following the shooting suicide of a member’s stepson. Their concern seemed fetishizing over the weapon (the make and model was of great interest), its retrieval and cleaning as not to let a perfectly good piece go to waste, and blaming the kid’s “mental illness,” rather than the pistol. Never mind why the mentally ill young man was encouraged to accumulate deadly weapons. From their fervid fussing over that revolver I gathered that the death instrument was far more valued than the person it killed.
14
You have to ask, who in the captured organization profits monetarily from this capture.
Or was it an infiltration?
5
If guns are a right and safe, why aren’t they allowed in government buildings like Congress? If our lawmakers feel the need for this right so strongly, why then do they make statehouses and buildings where they work gun-free? I think women and people of color should buy guns en mass and get trained in gun safety - parity in this is imperative. And if someone can bring a gun to a school or a church, they should be allowed to bring one into Congress as well. Or do only Congressional lives matter?
15
I've contributed to AFPS - what an issue for this org to sell itself out on. Pretty terrible that even our suicide preventers are curtailed by the gun lobby. Thank you for writing this editorial, and, above all, I am sorry for your loss.
5
Guns are the ultimate theatrical McGuffin: if there is a gun on the set, you know it will be used at some point in the performance.
So it is with guns kept in homes.
4
Suicide is a concept worth unpacking. Yes, teenagers and lonely hearts should be deterred and parents should understand what they risk by mixing their children and themselves with firearms. But there are many adults, contemplating a future of chronic pain or the trials of late cancer, dementia, Alzheimer's, CTE or other irreversible and incurable conditions, for whom the second amendment remains the ultimate appeal for a painless and quick end.
For the rest, the AFSP may be kowtowing and cowardly, or it may be attempting to promote awareness without triggering a kneejerk rejection by the gun owners themselves, much less the NRA. I can't say.
When you live in a country where the NRA can actually get laws passed to prohibit the CDC from researching gun health hazards or doctors from talking about them with their patients, well ... pity the poor nonprofit.
5
We should have "decide-acide" in the United States or the same rules as Belgium and Netherlands allow their citizens. Let people have the right to a civilized death and your society can flourish. Recent college graduates won't wait years to have children because of invisible but real restraints very old people with dementia and Alzheimer's put on the society, as well as other severely disabled people who would prefer to be dead. Many of the older people with severe cognitive disorders before they developed their affliction would have opted to stipulate euthanasia when their condition reached parameters they considered necessary to maintain a healthy life worth living.
2
I am in shock having read this article. My brother Dave committed suicide by gun, and his family will never not ache. I walked in the 2013 ASPF event pictured in the online version of this story. It was so hard and so important. I Felt I had done something in Dave’s name by raising more than $5,000 for that organization. I am sickened to learn that ASPF has allied with the National Sports Shooting Foundation. I held this group in such esteem, and I am devastated by this betrayal. This alliance is not the way to help; it’s just evil.
145
I suggest that you look at the actions of the groups mentioned and not mentioned. The fact is that NSSF has done much more than all of the "gun grabber" groups to prevent suicide have. The reality is that a gun in the home does not affect the suicide rate, just the method.
Yes, TexasTopCat, we couldn't expect the NSSF to support limitations on gun ownership, because having guns is what makes life worth living.
Isn't it sort of common sense that a gun in the home makes it easier to commit suicide with a gun? Sort of like a car in the garage makes it easier for a drunk to drive, right? Does the writer really think that anyone with a brain does not understand this? Both the NRA and the NSSF have active and effective programs that educate people about the responsibilities of gun ownership -- which includes safe storage practices. Sure, in a perfect world, just as drunks don't need to have access to automobiles, suicidal people should not have access to guns. But no one is suggesting banning cars to achieve that end. I would imagine that the AFSP understood that the writer's belief that gun control is the magic fix for suicide was based more upon her (understandably) emotional impulses rather than logic.
5
How would you go about enforcing "safe storage practices?" Should the police be empowered to conduct random searches of gun-owning households to ensure that such practices are being followed? If you're not willing to accept such enforcement methods, then safe storage is a non-starter as a method of curbing gun violence.
Gun control is proven to reduce not only suicide (Australia) but gun deaths and injuries involving children.
And, as far as I know drunk driving is not as prevalent now as it was 20 years ago as a direct result of groups such as Mothers' Against Drunk Driving.
The Congress, at the wishes of the NRA prevents any research on the connection between guns and public health.
Yes, we all know that having a gun in the house makes it incredibly easy for someone to kill themselves.
The real question is what to do about it.
I'd start with proclaiming gun violence as a public health issue.
Peter: Of course I am not willing to accept such enforcement methods. Are you? But does that mean that safe storage practices should not be taught?
Non profits are there to make money. They only become non profits so they can be under the radar. So many frauds in the non profit industry. Looks like the gun group offered them more money than you could bring in.
In most countries where sensible gun laws are present, there is a significantly lower suicide rate. This is not a coincidence. The proliferation of guns in civilian hands in this country is inexcusably out of control. The instances when a private gun owner has prevented violence are almost nil, while events where guns were used to commit acts of violence are increasing. This is also not a coincidence. This evening, I was threatened with a person who noted they had a gun - while I was feeding community cats. This is ridiculous and obscene. I have read the 2nd Ammendment again and again and there is NOTHING in that language that guarantees any civilian the right to have a gun for personal use. I am guessing that the overwhelming majority of gun owners and fanatics have not even read it. The NRA and other organizations that support gun ownership put money before life - among the grossest and most egregious distortion of American values today. It's tragic that most gun owners and fanatics have to experience personal tragedy to accept the danger and uselessness of personal gun ownership. The fact that the organizations mentioned in the article accepted money in exchange for stifling free speech is beyond reprehensible. I am thankful and grateful that the author of of this article was brave enough to expose the truth.
7
LisaG: He was probably there with a gun to shoot the community cats. If so, he should get a medal.
Most sensible countries have medical care for all.It is not the guns that are the problem .It is the lack of care.
It's hard to be sure if the gun lobby reflects the inhumanity of our national administration or the other way around. Whichever it is, this politically convenient marriage of "pro life" proponents markets preventable death without the merest hint of shame, irony or thoughtful reflection.
3
While I am sorry for your loss, which is tragic, I believe your father would have been much better served by a revamped mental health care system rather than a pointless debate on the method of his death.
Should we begin blaming the auto industry for the thousands of DUI deaths each year?
5
No, but like car owners we could have gun owners insure their weapons against harm done by them.
I think most people know that if you shot yourself with a gun, the likelyhood of serious injury or death is quite high; we dont need a bunch of MDs and Ph.D.s at the CDC to tell us that. I would support increased funding for mental health services...but more "gun control" is a non-starter.
2
About 2/3rds of the 33,000+ Americans who die from gun shots are suicides and 80% are white men. And in 95% of the 11,000 gun shot homicides the shooter and the victim are of the same color aka race. Domestic shootings are not uncommon. Most shootings involve people from the same neighborhood socioeconomic educational caste class. Shootings of civilians by stranger criminals aka non-gang criminal related are rare. Mass shootings are rare.
The fact that white male suicides has not evoked a call for reasonable gun control should come as no surprise after what happened to those kids at Sandy Hook. I had a cousin who was a Vietnam War combat veteran suffering from unrecognized untreated PSTD commit suicide by gun. Mental and emotional health illness maybe the gun control conundrum. There is "no good guy with a gun" who can help in the darkness of an individual's depression.
3
I lost two siblings to suicide within 4 months of each other. My sister shot herself with her husband's gun. I have never owned a firearm, nor do I want to. Too many problems can ensue, and it is up to the public to break the NRA's stranglehold on policy.
77
Huh? How do you connect "policy" to suicide? Vast gaping chasm there in case you missed it.
1
Thanks for the revealing information. Money, as we know, is the root of all evil. We also know that the NRA and the NSSF have bought Congress, it adds to this depressing year to discover that they are buying these non-profits too.
6
The LOVE of money is the root of all kinds of evil.
These people love the money more than they value the lives they want to save.
Money is a killer, isn't it? You can co-opt most people with enough money,
I am sorry to say that the author's father, that the 30K+ who die each year, whether they are a group of small children, or a group of concert-goers, or a Christmas Party, or just a guy who works in a liquor store, or a kid on the wrong porch when violence erupts, all these people are reasonable sacrifices to uphold the current interpretation of the second amendment.
Gun manufacturers, sellers, re-sellers, ammunition makers, accessory manufacturers and sellers and re-sellers are facing a relatively saturated legal market for guns. They have no interest in any group advocating a further shrinkage of market.
They are happy to trade a few losses like the author's father for the right of annual revenue growth.
6
After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, even though our president at the time was a decent person, nothing happened. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that during Trump's sociopathic fiasco, nothing is going to happen. This entire gun control argument ought to be shelved for now, as it will have no effect except for being twisted to make reasonable people seem like second amendment haters. Why argue when you can't win? Reasonable people don't have anyone lobbying for them in Washington, plus the NRA has everyone in congress fearful that their career will be destroyed if they rock the boat. Wait for an opportunity that shows a chance of success. For now, Trump guarantees failure. His base loves guns, and he doesn't care about anything more than their adulation. NRA lobbyists own congress. There will be no meaningful gun control measures passed in the next three years.
3
I admit that I know nothing of suicides or suicide prevention and frankly, I don't even understand how one would prevent another from committing suicide. That aside, it baffles me that any reasonably intelligent person could possibly think that there is any (literally, any) reason to own a gun in this day and age.
5
If you truly believe that gun ownership leads directly to violence, then eventually you will conclude that all guns must be seized. You will not be content with making a small dent in the number of new guns, they all must go. You know it and we gun owners know it. That's why you will get nowhere in this issue.
3
No need to invoke belief when the USA is the first world poster child for gun saturation and gun carnage. The research is clear, the facts are clear, the consequences are clear. What remains is a faction so fanatically devoted to instruments of death and dismemberment, and so irrationally fearful, that their perceived individual right to own outweighs the collective right to life and liberty.
More Americans killed by guns in peacetime in private and public spaces by fellow citizens, than in war on the battlefield by the enemy. What a shameful statistic.
Its obvious that the people that are trying to rid the world of guns have never felt afraid in their own home. They have never lived in a neighborhood where something like home invasion, rape, and robbery is something that happens every day. I never hear the idea about making the country safer and getting us to a place where we do not feel the need to sleep with a loaded gun within reach. If we all were living an wonderful life where we look at statistics because we can't simply look outside for a view of the real world, maybe we would want gun control. I want the bad guys to loose all the guns first. Thinking that somehow if the good guys turn in their guns that the bad guys will too is not realistic thinking. Playing on the sympathies of those that have lost loved ones to suicide is a terrible way to try to prove a point about gun ownership.
3
You're right—I don't feel afraid. (And I don't have a gun.)
You're wrong, and you're right. Bad things have happened to me. But I am not afraid.
I know lots of gun nuts. They are afraid to even travel to a "dangerous" big city because they can't walk around armed. What makes this attitude even harder to fathom is that their own communities are rife with homicides, suicides and accidental deaths caused by people with guns. They would be much more safe while on vacation in Chicago or New York.
What kind of life is it where you have to have a loaded firearm with you wherever you are? Even in bed. It is possible that you need to get help.
The bad guys in other countries have a much harder time obtaining guns, for some reason. And when it comes to good guys and bad guys, there really is no such thing. Forty-eight people died in Las Vegas and hundreds have been traumatized because of just one "good guy" with a gun. A five year old Alaskan just killed himself with his "good" parent's handgun. Last year a young man accidentally killed his girlfriend in a botched suicide attempt. The list is endless, and the body count is just the tip of the iceberg. Injuries, threats of bodily harm, loved ones left behind, trauma of all kinds.
Even if the statistics showed that only once in the history of the world a person ever was prevented from being murdered or worse in their own home, I want the right to be have a gun to have the chance to defend myself in my home. You can not convince those living in the real world using statistics. When you live in the real world you know the people you saw on your walk home or outside in your community. You do not want to be a victim. The statistic about people that keep guns in the home are obvious. If there is no gun there is no potential accident. But look at death by driving. If there is no car there is no death by driving accident. Look at cancer. If there is no cancer no death from cancer. Obviously accidents will occur. Many many people die from falls in the home, but we do not pad the house with nerf or pillows to prevent falls. Look at animal abuse. If we are not allowed to keep pets, none will ever be abused. These statistics are obvious and meaningless. We are not going to change these things to prevent deaths. We will not give up cars, we will not pad our houses and we will not give up our pets. We will continue to live our lives as we have, and we will continue to hear these arguments from the nanny state trying to legislate our freedom from harm.
Fact: The 2nd amendment gives nobody the right to carry a gun outside their home - so says those who know, the Supreme Court.
Fact: strict gun control works - otherwise guns would be permitted in Congress, where shamesless hypocrites work.
Fact: Gun control laws are Constitutional.
Fact: One day we will have sensible gun laws. The only question is, how many must needlessly die before we do the right thing?
7
Your first "fact" is incorrect.
1
Two thirds of gun deaths are suicides. About twenty percent are criminals. The first want to die. If you really care, then fix the why not the how. Not easy. The second group are criminals usually threatening the police or one criminal killing another. What do you propose for that?
Suicide rates per country are all over the map. (Sorry) Among the industrialized countries, the US, with our lose gun laws, as you would expect, has a relatively high rate of suicide. But Sweden, with it's strict gun control laws, is higher and South Korea is much higher. Korea's high rate is explained as having a to do with members of it's elderly population getting into dire straights financially. Korea has a minimal social safety net. Sweden, however, is a puzzle.
Those close to me, who have committed suicide, all of them, 100% of them, have killed themselves with a gun. Would any of them still be alive if they hadn't had easy access to a gun? I can't say. But what I can say is, that I despise the people who try to hide the link between guns and suicide.
7
So all you care about is stopping someone from killing themselves to make make you feel better.
I would guess that long dark winters have some part in the high suicide rates in Sweden
We need a national program that melts down guns. There arent enough options to get rid of guns forever. When does a gun die? New guns are made everyday. You could encourage moms, sisters and grandmothers to turn guns in.
I dont trust the cops. We had a gun buy back program. The cops and the mayor thought it was a good thing to sell a few of the most expensive guns because its good revenue for the city. The people thought they were giving them in to get rid of them. St Charles IL we are paying attention. This was a very dishonest thing to do.
1
Yes. There are alternative ways of committing suicide but there are tremendous differences.
Guns account for far more suicides than anything else, but as a distant second men choose hanging and women poisoning. Both require time to pull off, thought about means and places, acquisition of materials, a determined effort. And always with the distinct possibility of failure.
Not so with a gun. Put it to your head and pull the trigger. Done and dead almost always.
And lest we forget, pills and belts and ropes have other uses, constructive uses that have nothing to do with death.
Guns have one purpose only. To kill. That's it. They are not a tool useful for any other purpose. Eliminating pills and belts and ropes would have a negative effect on society. Eliminating guns would not.
Certainly eliminating those objects from your home are quantifiably different.
6
Uh, why shouldn't we allow people to take their own lives? Or are you just incensed when they do so with guns? Seems like the ultimate - and last freedom - that government cannot take away from the individual.
7
You make it sound like a reasoned decision. In many cases suicidal impulses are just that, impulses, which are more easily effectuated with a nearby gun than other methods. Libertarian notions like your assume a degree of rationality that is often not present when it comes to suicides.
America seems to be held hostage to some 33% of its population that is obsessed with guns, hates healthcare, and votes for Donald Trump. Sensible gun control will never occur until you have sensible electoral reform.
8
What is sensible gun control?
This article and many of the comments make me want to go out and buy more guns and ammunition.
Don't believe everything you think.
If we get rid of the guns who would have them? ( the criminals )
Think about it.
5
When fewer citizens have guns, and there are more laws preventing ownership, then fewer criminals have guns and fewer police need them. The net result is fewer criminals shooting people dead, fewer police shooting citizens dead and fewer citizens shooting police dead. It’s a virtuous circle, and the opposite of the nonsensical free-for-all that gundamentalists posit.
Looks like the AFSP leadership was bought off by the gun lobby.
12
Perhaps they were founded by the gun lobby to lure in the survivors and their $1000 entry fee.
Unmitigated evil.
How on earth did this partnership between the suicide prevention group and the gun group come about in the first place? Did the gun group just buy their way in so they could "disarm" the suicide group on the issue of gun control? This makes no sense to me. Please explain.
18
Waddles, quacks, feeds with head in the water, tail in the air.
Nuff said
Suicide isn't about the survivors, the family, friends, etc. That's too bad, because their agony is overwhelming. However, It's about the person who chose to commit suicide, whose agony was vastly greater.
That suicide is generally illegal is one more bit of the petty tutelage of our Nanny Government. Off our backs. If we want to kill ourselves, that's between us and God. The much lesser pain of the survivors should be a factor in the choice only as it affects the decision of the potential suicide. It is not something to "prevent", but to endure.
When I put my dog down, my best friend supported my decision with: it's a blessing we can bring to our pets that we're not allowed to give ourselves.
7
Committing suicide is NOT illegal. Helping someone commit suicide is...
Only someone who has no personal experience of suicide could say such a terrible thing.
Loved all my pets, but they were euthanized because they were old and suffering physically. As far as I could tell they were not depressed and would not have committed suicide, so the analogy is absurd. Euthanasia for people is illegal, but suicide has no real legal consequences unless it's assisted. A severely depressed person is literally unable to think rationally and make sound decisions and, after the fact, would probably not consider their suicidal act a blessing that they gave to themselves.That is why for people the blessing is in intervention by loved ones and society To not act is to diminish our humanity.
Obviously guns should not be kept in the home of suicidal individuals, or at risk persons. That being said, the article relates an interesting story. Suicide prevention organization that is infiltrated and bought by a gun lobby. I think it goes to show how far those that realize are going to keep legal guns in the home. When I was living alone, having a gun in the house was not as important. Now that I the one to defend my wife and family, I should not ever be a criminal from keeping a gun in my home. Listening to the story of persons that were the victims of home invasion involving rape and murder, makes one feel that protecting yourself in your home is important. Cars kill. Should we stop driving? Opiates kill, do we ban pain meds? Taking the gun away from someone determined commit suicide will just result in them doing it a different way. And yes, a member of my family took his life with a gun. This does not make me want to take guns out of the home. Statistics can be used to back up any agenda. If only 1 life was ever saved by keeping a gun in the home I will keep a gun in my home. Better to give yourself a chance.
As surreal as the American Lung Cancer Prevention Society partnering with Phillip Morris and not wanting to hear anything bad about cigarettes.
15
Something even more horrifying about suicide attempts with guns are what happens to many survivors. Brain damage, disfigurement, maiming, paralysis, and so on.
In my medical training I saw an example. It was on a plastic surgery unit. The patient had attempted suicide unsuccessfully with a firearm and afterward had no recognizable face. Nor would the reconstructive options give him much of one. The basic goal of treatment was to provide functionality to breathe and take nourishment.
The holdup for solving this problem seems to be political lobby corruption, which successfully immunizes politicians against responding to appeals to basic human decency. We have to take the money and power of wealthy lobbies out of politics. Not just for gun violence, but for many other critical societal problems as well.
I also would like to see prosecution of politicians for criminal negligence and manslaughter for their dishonest, corrupt actions hurting the public by protecting the interests of the gun industry.
13
You want the politicians who get elected as prosecutors and judges to have dictatorial authority over the politicians who are elected to represent the people as legislatures? You may have competent medical training but your civic educational level is less than rudimentary. Stick to your knitting
Again, the profits of gun dealers are more important than the health of OUR citizens. The NRA exists only to protect the interests (profits) of those that sell guns.
9
My sympathies to Ms. Dunkerly on her father’s death.
Like Ms. Dunkerly, my family has experienced suicide loss. In 1991, my father-in-law took his life and in 2013 his brother took his life. They both used firearms.
Like Ms. Dunkerly, I volunteered to join the board of an AFSP chapter and I write this comment in my individual capacity.
AFSP has not become captive to the gun lobby. Firearms account for approximately 50% of all suicide deaths. Failing to work with the firearms community would be the charitable equivalent of professional malpractice.
The AFSP/NSSF partnership advocates the temporary removal of firearms during periods of increased risk of suicide. This position is fully consistent with Ms. Dunkerly’s finding that removing guns from a home significantly reduces the risk of an impulsive suicide.
The relationship between firearms and suicide is the first critical area AFSP's Project 2025, whose goal is to reduce the annual suicide rate in the United States 20% by 2025. AFSP endorses incorporating suicide prevention education as a basic tenet of responsible gun ownership and encourages the use of safe storage to reduce access to lethal means.
Ms. Dunkerly states "that the AFSP seems willing to sacrifice [suicidal] people with a deceptive partnership is appalling.” With respect, what is appalling is the unmerited savaging of an organization whose volunteers are working hard every day to save lives and bring hope to those affected by suicide.
3
What is appalling is that the AFSP is taking cues for proper storage and ownership from the gun lobby while also excluding gun violence prevention groups from sharing their research-backed recommendations. Research shows that a woman who owns a gun is 2x as likely to be killed with it in a homicide and 15x as likely to be killed by it in a suicide. The NSSF suppresses this type of information. The above statistic, and many others, has convinced me that I am safer without a gun in my home. Depression doesn’t work on a schedule. Neither does drug and alcohol abuse. Angry words can escalate to homicide when guns are present. The NSSF used to recommend that people consider risk factors such as these as well as crime statistics before deciding to buy a gun. Now they seem like the NRA that puts profits over people and see suicide and unintentional shootings as the “price” to pay. Truly appalling.
6
I agree with the author one hundred percent. As a person who rid my home of guns years ago due to depression and the risk of using them on myself, I would recommend this course of action to anyone who suffers from depression or has a family member with a history of depression and free access to the family home. The advice to temporarily remove guns “during periods of increased risk of suicide” is asinine at best. It is very difficult for psychiatrists and other trained professionals to predict when periods of increased risk will occur with certainty and I imagine it is impossible for families with a depressed family member. A suicidal person not likely to ask their family to remove firearms from the house until further notice, especially if they are male.
Depression affects different people in myriad ways and the notion of an increased period of risk is meaningless in many cases. A depressed person who appears to be going through a “good” spell may, with no clear warning, wake up one morning and if a handgun is available, take their own life. This scenario is very close to my own experience and had it not been for my wife, who unbeknownst to me, made sure neither of the two guns in our home was loaded, I would not be reading this piece today. The first time I took a gun from its case with the intent to shoot myself was the last because I sold both pieces the same day.
149
In 2008, David who was my soul mate and best friend, committed suicide by using a method other than a gun, a method that is known by a small percentage of the population. Upon learning the details, I contacted the local business that had provided the equipment, a contraption that is otherwise used for things that are far removed from death and despair. Together, we came up with a few sensible ways of controlling the distribution of the equipment in question. I was struck by the compassion and understanding that the owners of the business displayed. Humanity trumped everything as a result in a small corner of our world. The gun lobby is fully capable of demonstrating the same level of humanity. Humility will not set back the 2nd amendment rights. It just might put it on a more firmer footing.
8
In Canada the government brought in gun control legislation in response to a massacre carried out by a young man with a gun.
One item they put in was that if you owned a gun (or several) you had to have 'secure storage' for your weapon(s). What this amounted to was that where ever you stored your weapon(s), you had to have a lock on the door.
I belonged to a sailing club and we had an old shotgun that we used when we started our races. We only ever fired blanks from it (though these can be lethal too from close range). So what was the impact? We put a lock on the cupboard where we stored the gun when not in use.
You'd think gun advocates would be okay with this as it would likely lead to a drop in the suicide rate which in turn would deprive the anti-gun lobby of an argument against guns.
Oh well. Too much logic in that argument I guess.
6
How, might I ask, is how does Canada enforce this safe-storage law? Does the RCMP make random home inspections? Exhortations for safe storage as a argument against the need for gun control laws always seem ridiculous to me unless there is a mechanism to enforce such strictures. I doubt gun owners in the US would be happy if the police could show up unannounced to inspect how guns are stored.
You are quite right that the use of a firearm is much more likely to result in a death than nearly every other means except jumping from a great height. Furthermore, the presence of a firearm increases exponentially the likelihood of murder-suicide.
It has been a repeated finding across the world and across time, that reducing access to means, reduces the rate of suicide. Every society should view suicide prevention as related to other public health measures. A reasonable analogy is the wearing of seat belts.
It does not surprise that in the USA, even groups supposedly devoted to suicide prevention have given up on firearm control as a means to reduce the suicide rate. If the events at Sandy Hook cannot change American cultural attitudes and laws relating to firearm ownership, than nothing will.
6
David Hemenway of Harvard is the leading gun violence researcher in the country. I’ve linked to his recent appearance on CSPAN. Unlike partisans on either side of the debate, he actually shows how we can save lives and preserve gun rights. We all deserve a sane and scientific approach to this issue.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?435394-4/washington-journal-david-hemenway...
3
https://www.medpagetoday.com/primarycare/preventivecare/69889
Primary Care > Preventive Care
Firearms and Public Health: A Gun Owner's Perspective
Retired ENT Timothy Wheeler says much of organized medicine is on the wrong side of the issue.
2
We've given up on the gun lobby being responsible gun owners. A majority of Americans and law enforcement officers know that access and accountability are reasonable and necessary safeguards. How we've allowed those to be elected who aren't interested in lowering the risk to our families is our fault. Let's fix that ASAP in memory of all who have been tragically lost and to keep the rest safer.
4
Here is the bottom line: We are supposedly a civilized society. We also sit back and do very little to try and stem the tide of violence from guns in this country. Don't study gun violence. Don't study use of guns in suicide. Don't restrict gun ownership for dangerous individuals. And, most important, do not restrict the ownership of guns intended for use in war. Whenever it is pointed how many mass murders there are in this country, whenever statistics are published citing gun violence as a leading cause of death for young people, whenever it is pointed out that perpetrators of domestic violence often murder their victim with a gun, and whenever it is pointed out how lethal a suicide attempt is with a gun and the fact that people who attempt suicide and are not successful often do not complete the act later on, the response is "guns are not to blame". The Congress does absolutely nothing after mass murder, then quietly makes ownership and portability easier. If guns are not the problem, let research show that. Why does the gun lobby impede research and do everything to prevent allowing smart guns to be available? What are they afraid of? Why don't gun owners form an alternative to the NRA that would promote ownership, but also promote common sense efforts to try and reduce gun violence? Common sense would seem to be needed here. But there is none.
136
1) There is no such thing as "gun violence" only criminal/human violence. Guns save many lives and are necessary for our individual self defense.
2) There are no limits on gun safety research, just on using public money for fake articles that are created to push gun control.
3) Smart guns are not viable at this time and are likely to never be viable for self defense. Smart guns are just another scheme to remove the ability of the law abiding to defend against the criminals.
Jimbo -great post.
The hypocrisy stinks. Its not the guns...but apparently it IS the fault of the drugs. So we ban drugs, spend millions on trying to stop the traffic, etc...only to discover the market demand grows bigger every year. So we spend more, amd ignore the users and their deep needs.
But its not the easy access to guns that has any impact. In this case its not the object, but the end user.
Thank you for writing this piece and for sharing this information with the public. I have been interested in this organization in the past - your article has inspired me to contact them directly with feedback.
3
The above article saddens me greatly. I believe in the right to keep and bear arms as protected by the second amendment of the Constitution. However, I am someone who suffers from depression and has for over 40 years. One way I have managed to survive as a depressed person in a world full of guns is to not have them in my home where I could easily get one. Not only that, I won’t have duct tape in my home. Further I will not keep alcohol in my home. All have been featured in plans for killing myself at one time or another.
I may not be able to eliminate all risks for suicide but I can make it as difficult as possible for me to act in the moment before I take time to remember the reasons I have given as to why I will never kill myself or hurt myself (my reasons to persevere) as written when I was at my best.
A suicide prevention organization should not waffle on the subject. Guns may be legal in this country and frankly I hope they continue to be. But if you are depressed or have a depressed person in your home get it out of your house — at the very least keep it in a locked safe and put on the front of that safe all the reasons why the person should not use that gun to hurt themselves.
7
The conduct of the AFSP described by Ms. Dunkerly is reprehensible. Families and friends confronted with suicidal depression in gun owners often do not grasp the enormity of the danger until it is too late - a situation that the AFSP in effect promotes. In my own family, such a tragedy was only narrowly prevented when my stepbrother physically wrested away my elderly stepfather's pistol. When our widowed parents met on a cruise and married, both our families were pleased. Within a few years, however, chronic disease had transformed a jovial older man into a depressed and angry individual. As a retired state trooper, he still retained his service revolver, making him a threat not only to himself but to my mother.
2
This is just another case of firearms being accused of volitional action. It is up to the individual to say whether his firearm should be removed when he's in one of his "moods". The problem there is that the person entrusted with it will not return it when requested not because he wants to keep it but because of the responsibility of knowing whether to return it.
The responsibility falls to the person who owns the firearm even in his diminished capacity unless legal action is initiated by the person voluntarily or involuntarily. An adjudication must take place initiated by psychiatric, police or a personal contact. It's rare a person will initiate the action himself since the legal system will remove the right forever even if the person recovers. Until that is reformed few will voluntarily report.
1
Welcome to our national abuse cultural gun sickness unique to the rest of our peer industrial countries. It is suffered by almost all second generation Americans equally.
Gun deaths can be separated in two major groups. Suicide and non suicide. A few peer countries like Finland and Swiss. (and small rural states like Wyoming and America suffer from this (suicide gun deaths) but only America suffers from the unique sickness of non suicide gun deaths.
The solution to the latter (and also would help the former) is legality, regulation, responsibility and non promotion of the gun.
If you want to see how successful this can be look at New York City that has seen a wave of Western European, Asian and Indian migration where our cultural gun sickness does not exist.
The gun death rate has plummeted to lows closer to a peer city in a peer country.
4
Thank you for this commentary. I find it appalling that others in this comment section maintain that someone "committed" to ending their life will find any means necessary and guns don't make a difference. So patently untrue. For many people, suicide is not a "commitment", but a rash decision made in crisis or whatever, especially for young males. That nearby gun makes it oh so easy for a distraught young person to make a deadly decision. Yes I'm liberal. But I live in a state where a lot of people hunt. I know they will keep their guns. But there needs to be a conversation to stem the proliferation of firearms and make the ones we have more safe.
6
The notion that we will somehow pass widespread gun control laws is a fantasy. The AFSP is thinking progressively, teaming with a would-be enemy, and working for incremental change. For those of us who have no use for the NRA but want to see some progress, this is the only way ahead that promises ANY change.
I'm sensing the cognitive dissonance here; the author's father did NOT own a gun, he stole one and used it. I thought theft was already illegal, so what would additional legislation accomplish? Someone broke a law to end their own life- would you think they would hesitate to break a second?
We need to work on suicide prevention, but I'm not convinced that gun control will make any difference. Here's a list of suicide rates per 100,000 people by country from WHO data:
South Korea 24.1
Poland 18.5
Belgium 16.1
Japan 15.4
Finland 14.2
United States 12.6
France 12.3
Austria 11.7
Switzerland 10.7
Canada 10.4
From this data you can see that the US is in the middle of the pack of developed countries when it comes to suicide rates and has a rate lower than some countries with much stricter gun laws. It's hard to argue that the presence of guns increases the suicide rate. It is more likely that guns affect the means, but not the frequency of suicides.
2
As always opinions are fairly imperious to facts. Seeing this data, I wonder if it might actually suggest that such alliances as this writer decry between the shooting sports community and suicide prevention community have actually been productive. If the presence of guns does indeed increase the risk yet the US with it's massive number of guns is not at the head of the list, then gun owners in American must overall be doing something right.
This Op-Ed piece nearly misses the point: the concerted effort by the gun lobby to prevent accurate information about guns from being disseminated. As with so many areas of public concern, industries have taken to simply buying influence. In your case, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry trade association, bought influence over your organization, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Similar buyouts are happening with colleges, who are increasingly accepting large "donations" from corporations and industry lobbies who then expect moderation or abandonment of teaching and research that conflicts with the corporations' or industries' interests. The question not addressed in this Op-Ed is why your group sold its soul to the gun lobby and why you didn't protest and, if necessary to preserve your integrity, leave in a very public way.
145
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't announcing your disgust with a group's policies on the front page of the New York Times considered leaving in a very public way?
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention joined forces with a gun industry trade association for one reason only: money. Even if top officials at AFSP completely understood the trade association's ultimate goal for the pairing, they wouldn't have breathed a word of it to staff and supporters until the deal was completed.
4
I think an Op-Ed in the NY Times IS leaving "in a very public way"!
4
I guess writing about it in the NYT isn’t very public.
1
I work in social services, and suicide prevention is an important part of my work. I don't think guns are going away any time soon, despite a lot of crying you might hear from the gun lobby. So for now, we are stuck with the presence of guns in the home as a risk factor for suicide.
In my field, we're trying to come to grips with the concept of "harm reduction." Social workers are more inclined to try and manage people's lives for them, but it doesn't work. You have to give people the resources and let them come up with their own goals, you can't force your own on them. This involves a lot of difficult conversations about drug use and cutting and every kind of self-destructive behavior you can imagine. And your clients won't promise you that they will keep themselves safe, because they don't feel they can.
From a public health perspective it is all but useless to tell people "you shouldn't have guns in the home." They're going to be in the home. As absurd as it may seem to you, many people see guns as a part of their lifestyle and the exercise of their rights. If you talk about ways that they can keep them secured, you might get a little more engagement. And maybe over time you can explore why they have the gun in the first place. Maybe they're a hunter and they need it, who knows. Maybe they're insecure.
It's frustrating but the gun lobby has a point, despite its mafia tactics. Safe storage is a part of any realistic conversation about guns and suicide.
32
You ignore the fact that we have fewer and fewer gun-owning households in the United States, and that the youngest generation of Americans, the millennials, are even more gun-shy than the generations before them. Only a third of American households own a gun, a figure that falls to twenty percent in millennial households.
http://www.politicsbythenumbers.org/2015/03/10/millennials-still-eschew-...
Guns are largely sold today to people who already own guns. Consider that those 1/3 of households, or roughly forty million, collectively own at least 300 million firearms. That works out to an average of 7-8 guns per gun-owning household, with thousands of people owning many more than that.
So I would argue your premise is wrong from the outset. Gun-ownership is not the norm in America, nor should it be normalized. We must continue to spread the word on the dangers posed by guns in homes and discourage the belief that they are a proper feature of ordinary American life. If people want to own guns, they should know that decision puts them in a small and shrinking minority of the citizenry. Considering that gun ownership is rare throughout the rest of the developed world, Americans need to see gun ownership as an abnormal behavior and not the norm.
2
The only truly safe storage is outside the home.
1
But don't you find it a problem that "safe storage" is determined to be the only "realistic conversation," and that it is the gun lobby that has decided this? These people are in the business of making money from guns.
1
Erin, first, I am sorry for your loss. And I truly meant it, because losing someone to suicide can stay with you for a long time.
Since you are a lawyer in the LA area, you are no gullible individual. That said, this statement, "which required me to donate or raise $1,000 a year[,]" is alarming. Understandably, non-profit organizations need funding. I used to be a volunteer at a local chapter of a world-wide befriending service in my youth. The local chapter is independently run. So it raises its own fund and has its own board. So I know how hard it is to get fundings and such. But it never strays from its mission. At least while I was there. Because the real product is befriending and to share the expertise with other organizations (I used to give talks to other non-profits). Once you are compromised in any way, you are done. People at risk will not confine in you. And other organizations will not hold you in high esteem and cooperations (while I was there, folks like first responders and poison control would take our requests seriously if the at-risk consent to our medical assistance).
With regard to your experience with A.F.S.P., you are doing the right thing. However, I got the feeling that you are still trying to work out your feeling as a survivor of your dad's suicide. Perhaps it is good for you to seek out another suicide prevention organization that will provide services to survivors as well.
16
As someone who has been in the mental health field all my life, this is one of best statements i have read re guns, impulsivity and suicide— the same information is relaxant to homicide. In either case, usually, not one but many lives are lost. These powerful lobbying groups need to be confronted by all of us. I am grateful for this statement.
3
In his Heller dissent Justice Breyer wrote that for every would be burglar repelled by a homeowner with a gun there are four gun related incidents in the home.
Requiring safe storage of guns would allow the home owner to have the protection of a gun and at the same time prevent many gun deaths from children or mentally ill or violent people getting hold of a gun.
23
Well, Justice Breyer was wrong. The CDC estimates that there are about 250,000 legitimate uses of a gun to deter crime. For every suicide there are 12.5 would-be burglars.
This is dangerous disinformation. The CDC is not in this business of analyzing gun usage patterns. It was explicitly forbidden by Republicans at the behest of the NRA who was alarmed about the body of evidence being accumulated showing how dangerous guns were both to individuals and society.
The reality is there are two kinds of research. The pseudo kind conducted sloppily by partisans, often with industry support, intent on proving utility by collecting anecdotes from gun owners. This unscientific nonsense about Americans living in some orderly peaceful paradise is as laughable as it is false, but is amplified hugely by conservative voices. The other kind is genuine research examining actual documented encounters and outcomes, leaving no doubt about how likely guns are to harm owners and occupants and how unlikely guns are to protect them from harm. Multiple real world studies have concluded that the risks outweigh the benefits by a ratio of 5 or 6 to 1.
3
how do I safe store a gun(separate gun & ammo, lock gun etc) & have it ready?
Guns in the home not carried on the person should be stored in safes or trigger locked.
Too many children or mentally ill or violent felon /misdemeanors have accessed a loaded unattended gun and killed themself or others.
It used to be federal law that violent felons were banned from gun ownership but the NRA had this law modified.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/us/felons-finding-it-easy-to-regain-gu...
Under federal law, people with felony convictions forfeit their right to bear arms. Yet every year, thousands of felons across the country have those rights reinstated, often with little or no review. In several states, they include people convicted of violent crimes, including first-degree murder and manslaughter, an examination by The New York Times has found.
While previously a small number of felons were able to reclaim their gun rights, the process became commonplace in many states in the late 1980s, after Congress started allowing state laws to dictate these reinstatements — part of an overhaul of federal gun laws orchestrated by the National Rifle Association. The restoration movement has gathered force in recent years, as gun rights advocates have sought to capitalize on the 2008 Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms.
More than 400 people who committed crimes after winning back their gun rights under the new law, more than 70 committed Class A or B felonies..
11
I'd be interested in knowing how many of the states that routinely restore the ability to own a gun as easily restore the right to vote, which felons in many states forfeit permanently. I.e., I'm guessing there are states where a non-violent felon will permanently lose the right to vote, an essential civic liberty, while a violent felon may regain the ability to buy and own guns -- because the gun lobby wants to sell as many as possible, and the GOP has enabled that. This is the same GOP, mind you, that normally opposes restoring voting rights to citizens with a criminal record, even for non-violent acts.
2
A right is a right. If a person can have their voting rights restored then why not their right to be armed? The Constitution makes no distinction as to which right is more important than another right.
As the article I cited above shows many felons whose gun rights were restored have used their guns to commit new crimes.
Allowing felons to vote does not yield new crimes.
Scalia in his Heller opinion upheld denying gun ownership to violent felons.
1
I am sorry that Ms. Dunkerly's father did not get the mental health care he needed earlier in his life. Suicidal people will find a way to exit this life if that is what they want to do. Others use suicide threats as a way to get attention. Again, this is clear sign that mental health care is needed.
We can take all knives, guns, pills, vehicles, high spots, ropes, and anything else used in suicides and we will still have people killing themselves in roughly the same numbers. Suicide is a mental health care problem, not a problem with items used in suicides.
Lastly, if people are so far gone mentally, or know their "quality of life" is not what they want, people should be able to end their life on their terms. Sometimes you have to love someone who is suffering greatly enough to let them end that suffering permanently. I miss my grandfather more than words can say, but I am angry that he was not allowed to end his life on his terms and had to suffer extreme pain due to multiple untreatable cancers and doctors who believed that morphine addiction in his final weeks would be bad for him.
60
"We can take all knives, guns, pills, vehicles, high spots, ropes, and anything else used in suicides and we will still have people killing themselves in roughly the same numbers."
I do not think that this statement is correct. I think that access to guns increases the risk of successful suicide. I know of people who attempted to commit suicide using prescription medications: those efforts were unsuccessful because only a small fraction of medications are lethal when an entire 30-day supply is consumed in one period of time.
Suicide and the relative use of knives, guns, pills, vehicles, high spots, ropes and other methods can be examined using epidemiology. Unfortunately the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are explicitly forbidden to conduct research on the role of guns in suicide. It was the NRA who sponsored the legislation preventing such research.
We will not be able to reduce the high suicide rate in America without better funding for mental health care and more research on how suicides can be prevented by sensible gun controls, such as requiring gun locks on all firearms if there are children under the age of 18 in the household.
127
Dying,or worse, not dying, from a gunshot wound was most certainly not the solution to your grandfather's pain and lack of appropriate medical care. Many studies have shown that most suicidal impulses are very short-term and removing an easy means of suicide would save many lives. This has been shown in England where packaging Tylenol in hard-to-open blister packing has decreased the number of deaths. Delaying access to a gun would allow time to help the depressed person and maybe save a life. You can argue whether the number of people saved is in the tens, hundreds or thousands, but, in the end, isn't saving even one life important?
9
I sympathize with the pain your grandfather experienced - far too many doctors lose all common sense when it comes to opioids and yours is not the first story I’ve encountered with doctors refusing treatment because they fear drug addiction in the terminally ill. It’s absurd that drugs that the body builds tolerance to are given a max limit in hospital settings that is unrelated to pain levels or individual response. For a society that almost universally agrees that there is a time for our pets when it is kinder to euthanize them than to continue suffering, for us to condemn an individual who makes that same choice for themselves is hypocritical.
But suicides are generally not the result of hopeless terminal illness. And even if suicide attempts occurred at the same rate without access to guns, there would be far fewer deaths and more chances for intervention. Guns are not the underlying issue, no - but they make all of the problems we can never fully solve, like mental illness, more deadly. A woman that lives in a home with a gun is more likely to die of violence than one without one. 4 children in the US are shot every day. We cannot stop all domestic conflict or childhood curiosity or accidents - but we can make them less deadly. Why would we not?
68
We will never be silenced by the AFSP, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, or the NRA or any organization regarding gun safety & gun control. Never, never, never!!!
It is time to publicly attack these despicable organizations, the AFSP, NSSF, & NRA & indict them for what they are: soft on crime, hostile to any attempts to prevent suicides, and, above all, criminal organs that will do anything to undermine public safety, ensure the American public receives misinformation or no information regarding the dangers of gun ownership, the responsibility of gun owners, & the safety of the general public. Such being so, that makes the AFSP, NSSF & NRA criminal organizations.
Violate their every edict. Fight them. They are a haven of criminals. How should the American public fight criminal organizations? It should marshal & utilize every single private & public entity in the beginning of a war against the criminal NRA & all of its ilk & affiliates.
State Attorneys General should now fully investigate & bring indictments against these killer organizations. They should also trace all moneys to these groups from those shadowy CEOs of munitions manufacturers who finance the culture of death of innocent Americans & bring indictments against those who have been financing this war against the innocent American public at large.
The sooner the majority of Americans realize how criminal these organizations are, the sooner political pressure will result in legal actions to go after them.
63
It is shrill and reflexive denunciations like this one that make middle of the road firearms owners (of whjich I am but one of millions) less flexible when it comes to ANY controls on our Second Amendment rights. If everyone in the anti gun lobby could take a deep breath and try to understand where the "gun nuts" are coming from then perhaps there might be some room for compromise and some more common sense restrictions on ownership. But until that happens people like me will assume every attempt at regulation is another step on the road to confisacation. THAT is not happening in this country, at least not in my lifetime.
Killer organizations? What are you planning to use as proof for your indictments?
Why does a suicide prevention organization need any alliance with a firearms organization?
115
As described in the article, the suicide prevention group has been co-opted by the gun industry, probably by way of some sort of payoff to one or more individuals who are leaders of the group. And, beyond that, legislators are bribed with "political donations" to support the gun industry, against the best interests and safety of the public. It is essentially a criminal enterprise, not unlike the mafia.
53
Why? In a word, money. If a non-profit organization requires board members to raise of give not less that $1,000/year, it has serious governance issues. If the cause itself (the mission) is not compelling enough to support the organization, it needs to rethink its mission. An organization which mandates minimum givings is nothing but an employment scheme for con artists and an open pocket being picked of the gullible who follow them.
2
I would suspect that the organization was not founded to prevent suicides at all, but to lure in the broken hearted survivors and prey on them in their fragile state. Thus, the required $1000 entry fee.
Unmitigated wickedness.
Thank you for writing this piece and for sharing your story. As someone who has lost a family member due to a suicide by gunshot, I applaud you for your efforts to raise awareness about this critical issue. More guns means more offensive gun deaths and more suicides. We must not give up the fight for a safer society where protecting lives is the highest priority.
92
Thank you for writing Pete and for speaking out. I’m sorry for your loss.
1
Many gun apologists seem to harbor the sentiment that if some chose to commit suicide by a firearm that is it only their bad choice, and that they would have done so with other means if no gun were available --a point that the article makes clear by citing statistics showing the extremely high efficacy gun suicides.
However, another aspect of gun suicides is that they are often an act that follows a murder! Murder-suicide is an all too common event in our society. Sometimes the murder is that of a domestic partner and sometimes that of the shooters entire family, or as in the case of the Las Vegas rampage, and other mass shootings, the shooter was willing to murder many others.
61
I am sorry for what happened to your father. It is really sad. The statistic you site that guns cause over 80% of suicides is shocking. Over 60% of gun related deaths every year are from suicides. There seems to be little discussion or concern about this.
I have concluded quite simply that as more guns and ammunition become available, the more they will be used and the number of suicides will continue to increase.
The best way to reduce the use of weapons is to reduce the number of guns and ammunition.
It's common sense, which is in short supply when it comes to the discussion of guns in this country.
63
Sorry, but 99.9 percent of gun owners are law abiding and don't end up taking such drastic actions. I and my fellow gunowners refuse to be the scapegoats for misguided attempts to seize or limit our ability to access fireamrs.
Be careful when reading statistics- it doesn't say 80% of suicides come from guns, it says half do. 80% of suicide attempts by gun result in death.
2
The GOP/Trump/NRA Lobbyist octopus seems to have it's ugly tentacles deep within our society now. Little by little - they aim (literally) to alter the truth, and make sure guns are even more plentiful in a nation already awash in them - and a trail of blood.
38
As an outside observer I wonder as the USA is teetering on the edge of an extreme right wing abyss...all wealth held by oligarchs...all social supports removed...no old age pensions or disability supports...no health or medical care available to the masses, how long it will take for these munitions to be turned on the oligarch class.
2
If the continued annual slaughters of innocent Americans can not bring common sense to the issue of gun regulation, why expect anything but a radical theology of gun proliferation (with as few constraints as possible) from the NRA. Americans are 100 times more likely to be murdered by guns than Japanese. The US accounted for 82% of guns death among the high income countries with 46 % of the population. More Americans have been killed by fire arms since 1968 than in all our nation’s war. A Republican Congress will do nothing but bow to the NRA even if the annual rate of mass murder of innocents doubles.
33
To "Bored Critic"
I'll tell you why its is my business if you don't wear a seatbelt or a helmet,because when you get injured or killed unnecessarily as a result, all of we taxpayers will be footing the bills for the ambulance, police snd at least some of the hospital costs since all hospitals in the US are subsidized. So, unless you want to establish a fund to pay for these services, I don't want to be on the hook for your" ability to chose".
460
It often is stated as obvious that because my exercise of a right might impose some public costs, and that such public costs might necessitate a tax increase, the just thing to do is eliminate or restrict the right. One such right is "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Its exercise is quite likely to impose public costs for such things as public safety and litter cleanup. It also may impose direct private costs as, for example, when opponents of the peaceable assembly object and riot. Are we then to restrict or eliminate that right, or is it only appropriate to restrict unpopular rights, or their exercise by unpopular individuals or groups?
It is an unpleasant fact that we may be better off leaving a right alone and accepting the cost of its exercise than attempting to restrict or regulate it. Guns are used around 20,000 times a year for suicide, in a population where about 100,000,000 households have about 300,000,000 guns. In some, perhaps around 10,000 of those cases, unavailability of the gun would prevent or significantly delay the suicide. There certainly would be a significant cost to finding, and preventing use of, the roughly 1 gun in 10,000 households that would be used for suicide.
3
Actually, the top causes of death and illness in the US are preventable and self-inflicted. Smoking, sedentary lifestyle, drugs, etc. so I assume you don't want to be on the hook for any national health plan?
5
In consequence you would have to introduce the total nanny state, prohibiting a lot of activities, because motor cycle drivers, paragliders, skiers and so on incur higher accident and health risks.
3
Guns make killing easy and convenient, in terms of killing others or oneself.
38
I concur with you, the A.F.S.P. is betraying your hope of minimizing suicides from the irresponsible profusion of guns. Sad but true. And awful.
26
That an organization dedicated to suicide prevention would align with a pro gun group is insane.
What is also insane (there's no other word for it) is this country's devotion to guns. The evidence is overwhelming that easy access to guns is why we have over 33,000 gun deaths a year. Yet Republicans in Congress, lapdogs of the NRA, refuse to do anything about it.
The NRA and their supporters are responsible for far more gun deaths each year than deaths by terrorism in 50 years.
Insane.
45
33,000 firearm deaths annually would be an annual death rate of around 0.01% per year, out of a total annual US death rate of about 0.8%. That is about one death in 80. That is not inconsequential, but is a minor contribution to overall US mortality. While it is important to the individuals involved and their families, it may be a smaller consideration in the formation of public policy and the law. And in a context of a constitutional limitation of government action and ownership of around 300,000,000 firearms by around 100,000,000 people it will not be easy to change. It might be better to focus on the relatively smaller number at risk of suicide than on the very large number who have weapons that, if not available, might delay or prevent as many as around half of the roughly 15,000 annual firearm suicides.
2
No less insane than the idea they'd ally with an anti gun foundation. If only to prevent the kind of hysteria the article and comments generally demonstrate, shooting organizations have obvious reasons to want to prevent misuse of guns.
Evidently this organization does not actively seek to stop suicides so I no longer support it. As others have mentioned, why does NRA have any connection to them whatsoever? The majority of suicides committed by men in the USA are achieved with guns. My Father was one of them. I am deeply sorry for your loss. The NRA doesn’t care that people kill themselves with guns. They don’t care about people at all.
36
The NRA involved themselves in a suicide prevention organization for the same reason that Coca-Cola involved themselves in the American Diabetes Association....money and to prevent the truth from prevailing....
Civilians should have to be tested and licensed to have a gun, just like you have to be tested and licensed to drive. And military style weapons should not be available to civilians, period. It's really not complicated.
49
Unless automobile ownership requires a test, it is meaningless to compare it to gun ownership, which generally requires only (at most) citizenship and absence of any of a fairly small number of disqualifiers.
Mention of "military style weapons" suggests basic ignorance of guns and their characteristics. Guns - all guns - are potentially lethal weapons. A number of years ago at Chardon, OH, high school a student murdered several others with a .22 target pistol. Suicide using a gun, the topic here, is rarely done with a "military style weapon."
Visceral reaction to gun killings may be understandable, but is almost sure to lead to bad public policy proposals along with the rationalizations produced later to try to justify them. Even "obvious" measures like confiscating guns from those accused of domestic violence need to be considered in the light of numbers, costs, and other factors.
All too often the demand "don't just stand there, do something" needs to be restated as "don't just do something, stand there," at least until facts are gathered and analyzed.
I don't know about where you live, but in Florida you have to have been trained by the Military or Law Enforcement or take State regulated firearms instruction before you are granted a weapons permit. I suspect most (although not all) States are the same.
What is your hang up with "military style" weapons. First i dont even know what that means? Are you talking about AR variants that look like weapons currently in use in the military? Only black rifles? Are you talking about the semi/auto fire selection capability (civilians cant own automatic rifles in the US)? Are you referring to the list of features that states like NY use to classify a weapon as prohibited? If you actually dig intop gun death statistics you will find that more people are killed each year by knives or by being beaten to death than from long guns (shotguns or rifles) yet there seems to be some mania about rifle regulation. What are you trying to achieve by prohibiting "military style" weapons?
And taxed like an automobile.
I am saddened by the number of people writing in who are fiercely protective about themselves and who have no care for the communities and society they live it. Seems to me that this is a clear demonstration of why our country is in so much trouble; too many who care only about themselves and have no empathy for others.
37
I had PPD with my second child. Things got bad. Very bad. I'm not sure when I started planning suicide, but at the time, it felt like something normal... Like going grocery shopping. I needed something reliable because I couldn't botch this and then be a medical burden to my family (my PPD had already convinced me that I was a burden and that's what I was trying to fix). I don't have a gun. Finding a manner that was fast and reliable took a long time and it was during that time that I recognized what was happening and got help.
That was years ago. I'm fine now, but I would most likely not be here to write this had there been a gun in my home at that time.
154
Killers own our elections. The struggle to end gun terrorism will continue and it will succeed. I am grateful that the Times and others persist with this issue. Murder and suicide by gun can be vastly reduced and we all know it.
36
Very sad story, but what jumps out at me is how the tentacles of coercion crept into the non-profit. That is insidious and shows the extent to which the NRA and their backers are willing to go. This is a very sick country in so many ways.
51
Ours is a country run by campaign finance bribery.
Currently, any issue, however corrupt and mangled, is legitimatized in this country if it leads to enriching an election campaign’s finances. Sick.
1
Unless it is scientifically shown that guns create suicidal intentions, it's going to be very difficult to limit the the constitutionally guaranteed bearing of arms.
Less resistance will be met by addressing the root causes of suicide, rather than its methods.
10
That is impossible, since guns don't cause the suicidal tendencies. They help make suicide more lethal. And they tend to make it easier to kill others when they wish to take others along with them.
No one argues that guns make people suicidal. But a constitutional argument can be make w/o suicide. The founders wanted armed militia to defend the nation, under state control. They stated that in their writings that the militias were to be used in the defense of the union, against revolts and foreign invasions. It was repeated in the constitution itself that the role of the militia was to defend.
That is why they used the term well regulated. They intended for the militias to be under states' control.
4
Well that won't happen David, because the NRA succeeded in having legislation passed that forbids research into or collection of data to prove that "guns create suicidal intentions". Everyone talks about addressing the causes of suicide, "mental Illness" but as typical of such gun groups it's never done and in many cases are actively working to keep that research from happening.
1
It has been shown that the mere image or presence of a gun increases aggression and hostility toward others, escalating conflict. I hypothesize that a passively suicidal person without any plans who comes across a gun might begin to think about how easy it would be to end it all in an instant, taking them from passive suicidality to active
I know that I fear being in the presence of an unattended firearm. This is in part because even just the *thought* of a gun triggers a loop of ironic process in which the harder I try to avoid thinking about putting one to my head, the harder it is to stop. I don’t want to die, but I don’t trust my impulse control. Images of guns trigger that spiral. During my darker days, I haven’t had that same issue with images of pills, knives, or ropes. Those conjure scenarios in which I’d be aware of my incoming demise and that scares me enough to end the thought. With guns, all you have to worry about is nothingness
Guns are weapons of impulse. It’s as easy as the “push of a button.” Versus a rope, where you have to go through the effort of tying knots, positioning and angling your body, and waiting for death to come. Pills require you to get a glass of water, fight back the body’s urge to vomit, and wait for death to come. With a gun, you don’t wait for death to come. There’s no logistical gap between impulse and action. There’s no time for you to change your mind, or for somebody to find you
I don’t have access to a firearm, the images do enoug
5
What adds insult to injury is that the leading public health institute in this country - the CDC - is not currently allowed to do any research on specific uses of gun violence, including research on self-injury and suicide, and accidental injury and death to others.
About the only thing that the CDC can do is report statistics. From 2014, we know that there were ~42,800 suicides, with ~21,400 by gun. Compare this to ~33,600 total deaths from guns, and you can calculate that suicides make up almost two-thirds of all gun deaths.
We may know these numbers, but we have little evidence* for how to prevent or reduce it. Why? The NRA is not content to just shut down funding to the CDC, but it also is trying to take over any non-profit organizations that might present guns in a bad light.
To the author and others who would like to find organizations to support, I suggest CeaseFire PA, as well as any of Gabby Gifford's organizations.
* I deliberately used the word "evidence" even though it is on the list of banned words at the CDC.
45
Don't forget that after Sandy Hook, Pres. Obama commissioned the CDC to study gun use. They found that the legitimate use of guns to prevent crime far outweighs their use in crimes. Obama practically buried the report.
Thank you for opening up about the terrible loss of your father. One of my family's most painful losses was a suicide committed with a gun at home. Years later, it is hard to speak about something so senseless.
The death was not in vain, though. My cousin married a man who had grown up in a family of hunters who kept weapons around, and had assumed that tradition would continue. But she opened up about the suicide and was resolute that she and would not set up scene for that awful history to repeat. And she prevailed.
Suicide should be treated the way deaths from terrorism or homicide are - as something to prevent, not an inevitability. Until our leaders catch on, sadly, it will fall to people to open up about their own devastations to make others understand that unfettered access to guns is a hazard, not a safeguard.
331
I have lost two relatives to suicide. One was my middle-aged uncle. In the late70s he used a gun to end his life. I can't help but think that if he had tried some other means and failed, family would have rallied around him and he would have been with us for much longer.
2
Our "leaders" know all this perfectly well, but their campaign contributions matter more.
3
The facts show that anti-gun groups out spend pro-gun groups at a ratio of 10 to 1. Bloomberg spent 60 million in one year to push is gun control effort.
Thanks for outing the AFSP and the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
If suicide prevention is not important enough for these people to overcome their obsession with guns then it is impossible to ally with them.
25
Most gun owners support both mental health availability and see Suicide as a tragedy.
Conflating suicide prevention as oppositional to the 2nd amendment is despicable and unacceptable.
With rights comes responsibility. We seem to forget that when we talk about guns in this country. Not every suicide can be prevented but if there are common sense policies that we can implement such as requiring that firearms and ammunition be locked up separately we should be having those conversations.
Knowledge is power. If an agency isn't willing to educate people that a firearm increases the risk of suicide then they are not fulfilling their mission to save lives.
16
Firearms are kept in the home for protection. An unloaded gun offers none.
Recently a vice president of the NRA's home was broken into while he and his wife were at home. He used his firearm to run them off.
Respectfully, no. The meaning of a "right" is that you don't need to meet anyone's approval to exercise it.
1
Requiring guns not in use be stored securely would prevent many deaths.
If the friend's gun had been stored in a safe the author's father would not have been able to steal that gun and kill himself.
The Sandy Hook massacre could have been prevented if the mother had securely stored her guns.
Numerous children have picked up loaded unattended guns and killed them self or others.
Any law restricts freedoms.
The question is whether the restriction of freedom is more harmful than the lives saved by the restriction.
Saving lives by requiring safe storage of guns is much more important than the inconvenience of requiring guns not in use be safely stored.
But the gun lobby sees ANY gun safety regulation as one step to gun confiscation and therefore opposes ALL gun safety regulations.
29
It's not merely an "inconvenience." Requiring that guns be stored in a safe and unloaded means that you often won't be able to retrieve and load it in time during a home invasion situation.
4
If you don't want to store your guns in a safe then trigger lock them.
But do not leave a loaded gun unattended where a child or mentally ill or a violent person can pick up the gun.
15
Statistically speaking, suicide by firearm is a more prevalent problem than death by home invasion. Don’t most home invasions happen during the day when nobody is home? A load of good that’ll will do when a burglar breaks in while you’re at work and steals the gun meant to protect against them stealing your property. Property is replaceable and insurance is available to replace stolen property. Lives aren’t replaceable and life insurance doesn’t change that.
5
Note that Erin Dunkerly's father committed suicide not with a gun purchased from a dealer after a background check, but rather with a gun pilfered from a friend. His death would not have been prevented by any gun control legislation short of removing all guns from all homes.
Ms. Dunkerly has in fact two passions: suicide prevention and gun control. It was her passion for suicide prevention that led her to join the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Now she claims that this organization has become "captive" to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. It would be more accurate to say that her second passion leads her to want the A.F.S.P. to become the captive of gun control advocates.
As it happens, the National Shooting Sports Foundation is based in Newtown, Conn., the town that was the site of the Sandy Hook school shooting, committed with a legally purchased gun.
13
Mr. Chotkowski is disingenuous. If the friend hadn't had a gun readily available, Ms. Dunkerly's father would be alive. His conclusion about the "captivity" Ms. Dunkerly "wants" doesn't follow from Ms. Dunkerly's essay. There could be a discussion about how gun control and suicide prevention are related but Mr. Chotkowski, apparently, doesn't want to have it.
76
You are obscuring the point.
That being: there is an empirical association between gun availability (regardless of legality) and increased likelihood of suicide by a gun.
As a former NRA member (in the 1960's) and an expert shooter (Bar 9 at the age of 13), I long-ago realized that gun obsession is a form of, yes, mental illness.
I work in some of the most dangerous places and amongst the most dangerous people in the world. I would never consider either carrying or owning a gun in these places because it makes me far less safe than owning one might.
No comparison.
Proximity to guns is a health hazard. Period. End of story.
68
You clearly missed the point of this article by trying to poke holes in her story. This is not a argument you get to discredit. The author lost her father tragically, and his death was potentially preventable. She is openly advocating for gun control.
29
Don’t say gun control, say gun safety. They can have their guns while we can be safer from the effects.
30
No one is fooled. Just as no one as fooled by the assurance that "No one wants to take your guns away."
Sad and scary at the same time. Scary because this proves that the gun lobby will to do anything to sell more guns.
58
Ms. Dunkerly, thank you for sharing your experience and shedding light on the disturbing relationship between the National Shooting Sports Foundation (basically a lobby organization) and the AFSP. I am sorry for your loss and thank you for your work to help prevent other families from losing a loved one to suicide.
104
I grew up with guns, collect them, typically handle at least one daily, and shoot them regularly. The author is correct that generally speaking we write off suicides. At 61, I have personally known two men who committed suicide by pistol, and one who hanged himself with a dog chain. Were I too kill myself I would use a gun—for obvious reasons.
As such, I agree that having a gun in the home makes it more likely than not that a person who attempts suicide—and is serious about it—will use the gun, and has a high probability of success.
Regardless, it is critically important for an owner to keep his (or her) guns locked up in safes to which only he has the combinations or otherwise under his direct control to prevent theft or use in another person’s suicide.
69
Thank you for your thoughtful comment here! I too grew up around guns, because my father was a collector and hunter. He taught me to shoot skeet and trap, which I enjoyed. My father, a veteran, was very safety-conscious for his era. For instance, he never kept ammunition for any gun in the house except his one pistol; when he was going to shoot recreationally, he would stop at the gun shop and buy only what he planned to use that day. He kept the clip for his pistol hidden separately from the gun itself; luckily for our family, none of us was curious enough to go looking for it, or motivated by depression or suicidal thinking to find it. He had also been very outspoken about gun safety our whole lives, so we understood that guns are not toys. He was appalled that civilians could buy military-type weapons with little or no oversight. He favored better background checks.
Nowadays, responsible gun owners have many good options for securing their guns, as you note. We need to hear many more voices like yours -- the voices of reasonable gun-owning citizens, not lobbyists and manufacturers whose only concern is to increase sales.
3
Ha, Ha; It sounds like the author just got a lesson of realtime politics of the day and the idea that no one really cares about gun control enough to vote for it. It doesn't win any elections(it actually loses them) and causes unnecessary problems, that's it in a nutshell. Despite denials, it's a modern lesson that goes back to the 1994 general election.
2
Thanks God I live in Massachusetts where the majority of people Do care about gun control. And yet, thanks to trump, we may be forced to allow people from open carry states to carry their weapons openly here. Please, please, stay where you are with your guns, and I'll stay where I am, feeling secure in y home (and in my masculinity too) without any.
19
".....may be forced to allow people from open carry states to carry their weapons openly here..."
Unmitigated hogwash. The proposed Reciprocity legislation has NOTHING to do with open-carry, and is subject to any individual State's regulations concerning concealed carry.
1
"we may be forced to allow people from open carry states to carry their weapons openly here."
The law would actually allow people with concealed carry permits to carry them in states which allow concealed carry for their own citizens. Few states allow open carry in comparison.
for anyone who is depressed, suicidal etc, they will find a way, guns or no guns. that's why they tale pills, jump off bridges and buildings and step in front of buses and trains.
I still can't understand why it is the government's or anyone else's business if I want to take my own life, drive without a seat belt or ride without a helmet. these decisions affect my own life. Everyone else should keep their nose out of it and stop over-regulating our every action. just because you don't want me to and make it an "illegal act" doesn't mean I'm not going to do it if that's what I really want to do.
I know these opinions may sound harsh and uncaring, but in reality I care very deeply about my own personal rights and freedoms and my own ability to choose for myself. the days of uncontrolled personal freedoms in America are almost a thing of the past.
12
Some day, people who read enough about suicide (in the Times, no need for other sources) will learn that people who try to commit suicide very often change their minds quickly -- if still alive -- and want to be saved.
109
The fact is, however, that use of a firearm is far more effective than most other means of committing suicide. I believe suicide is an absolute right in some circumstances, and may be the ultimate right, as it supersedes all others. It is clear, though, that many who choose less effective means to attempt it will fail and may, with appropriate treatment, be persuaded not to retry it and live on with beneficial results for themselves, their families, and their friends.
It does seem odd that there appears to be a large and possibly nearly complete overlap between those who advocate for physician assisted suicide in some circumstances and for firearm controls to prevent suicide in other cases where the personal stress experienced may be equivalent. Consistency as to personal rights seems to be a fairly rare characteristic.
1
Anyone who is truly committed to ending their own life will find a way, yes. I support their right to do so.
The fact is, though, that many people who 'attempt' suicide aren't truly committed; often, they're glad, or come to be glad, to find themselves alive on the other side of the attempt. Guns tend to preclude this possibility.
4
I do not disagree with the author in any fashion, I would just like to point out that firearms or no firearms, depressed and suicidal individuals will still find a way. Firearms certainly make the deed a lot, lot easier, and for that reason they are particularly dangerous.
We should do more to make ours a society worth living in, in addition to finding ways to reduce the ease with which a depressed person can take their own life. At present, life is rather pointless for vast numbers of people, and the problem will only get worse as automation continues to eat into human work.
20
They will find an inferior way that probably leaves them salvageable and they will probably be thankful for that. Statistically speaking, that is.
32
I'm a doctor studying psychiatry and I hear this line of thinking a lot. It isn't true. The reality is that the thought processes of people with depression (not to mention other kinds of mental ilness) simply don't work the way you think.
These people often have temporary impulses related to their ilness and when they do, access to firearms can become deadly. I know you're trying to use common sense, but the evidence on this issue is clear. The availability of guns is directly linked to suicide rates, it may seem like they'll find a way, but the truth is that they simply don't. Having guns everywhere is the same as having pain killers everywhere. We need to be able to regulate them the same way.
71
Yes, there are always ways to kill oneself, most of which are survivable. Suicide by gun is rarely survivable. You may say well, they'll just try again. In some cases, that's true. But not as often as you might think. A lot of people find that if they survive their first attempt they actually want to live.
Two men who survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge -- a very rare occurrence had this to say:
Kevin: "The millisecond my legs cleared it, the millisecond of true free fall, instant regret for my actions."
Ken: "I just vaulted over, and I realized, at that moment, this is the stupidest thing I could have done. Everything could have changed."
If despair were the sole driver of suicide then all those people living on the sidewalks here and around the world would be dead by now. Tney're not. Wny? Because most of us know deep down that life is life and once gone there's no turning back.
Depression is a mental condition that, in most cases, is treatable. Having a gun available makes that treatment all but impossible if the attempt is successful.
444
Why would an “American Society for Suicide Prevention” have any justifiable reason for partnering with a Sports Rifle Association at all?? If the organization’s goal is to prevent suicide, the partnership makes no sense whatsoever. What was the reasoning for this “partnership”?
376
Certainly there is some revenue sharing between ASSP and the SRA, otherwise the hush money makes no sense at all.
28
Through my work, I've interacted with the nonprofit world for many years. From time to time, I've encountered bogus nonprofits used by profit-making entities to serve their PR needs and neutralize negative public opinion. One of the nation's largest breweries was behind one of these organizations and the tobacco industry was behind another. I suspect that might be what's going on here.
8
What was the reasoning? $$$$$$$$$$
8
I applaud you for going national with your very powerful narrative. The pain over your father's death and your fantastic accomplishment in his name only to be hijacked and distorted so up is down, complete with censorship must, at times, be overwhelmingly difficult, even as time passes.
The gun lobby is not a constitutional effort, it is a manufacturing lobby.
I think it is time for us to stand up, to raise money as they do and start bribing the congressman, as they do. We could be so much more powerful. All the different anti-NRA/sensible gun law groups should put egos aside and form one large lobbying group. Then we might have success.
I am sorry for your compounding tragedies.
287
The gun lobby wants to be able to sell guns to anyone. Their only interest is profits. The 2nd amendment argument for the gun lobby is just a convenient way to keep the gullible on their side. They don’t want any market to be restricted so they oppose all regulation, sensible or not. For the gun lobby, our domestic arms race is just more money, and they especially rake in the profits after each mass killing gives them loads of free marketing.
147
Thank you for this article. The association between firearm access and suicide has been proven by scientific studies, and yet it's kept quiet and further studies go unfunded due to the power of the gun lobby.
As a mental health provider working in the VA, it's horrifying to think of how many of the 22 daily suicides among veterans occur because our elected officials allow themselves to be bullied by the NRA rather than contribute to good science that will help people keep their parents, children, spouses, and other loved ones alive by reducing access to highly lethal means.
232
I had a similar experience with AFSP in Louisville when the NRA held its national convention in our city and I wanted to organize a presentation on gun safety and suicide prevention. Sad.
106
If anyone in your family is depressed he or she should not have access to a gun. You may think of yourself as a "good guy with a gun"--but what about your son/neighbor/grandchild who is going through a crisis? If they can get their hands on your gun, you will have enabled their death. Suicide is on the upswing all over the country: to you want to live with that guilt?
Shame on the A.F.S.P. How many people will die because of their hard core ideology?
58
Your father’s death is not in vain. You voice is heard loudly and clearly in this informative article. I learned quite a bit from it and its publication shines a light on the fallacy of this particular “suicide prevention” organization. Maybe it’s time they rethink their “no gun message”. It’s costing lives. You are saving them. Thank you.
107
Trample the Constitution to deny an adult his personal choice? No thank you.
11
Personal choice? At the moment of crisis, the severely depressed, suicidal individual has no choice, only the misguided conviction to end life. No one with a shred of empathy or morality would place constitutional rights above preserving life.
23
Rights are not trampled if we have a registry of guns, control gun sales, and require that individuals store guns responsibly.
15
Despite the Supreme Court decision (on a 5-4 split decision by a conservative court), there is no rational reading of the 2nd Amendment that argues for the availaibility of efficient hand-held, or other, killing machines.
They did not exist when the Constitution was written, and, if they had known of the insanity of our current U.S. infatuation with guns, they would have worded the 2nd Amendment more carefully.
16
My heart goes out to Erin Dunkerly -- and to everyone who has lost a loved one to suicide, by whatever means.
Every year ~33,000 people die from gun violence. Approximately ONE-HALF of those deaths are suicides! That a suicide prevention organization would associate itself with firearms manufacturers is beyond the pale.
When I hear the word "foundation" I automatically think of organizations that do good in the world. I don't think of the word in terms of an industry trade association, much less one for manufacturers of deadly weapons whose trade publication is titled SHOT.
It only takes one SHOT to rob a despairing person of their life. I'd say shame on the A.F.S.P. but clearly they have none.
86
Closer to 2/3 are suicide.
4
You may have more up to date information but what I'm working off of is ~33,000 guns deaths, ~11,000 of those being suicides.
"Every year ~33,000 people die from gun violence. Approximately ONE-HALF of those deaths are suicides! "
Over 2/3 of them are suicides. About 2/3 of the remainder is illegal shootings mostly taking place in cities with 1/2 taking place in the four largest cities.
Maybe we should ban cities??
Thank you for your thoughtful essay. My mother committed suicide by drowning and while it was a terrible decision, I KNOW she would have made that impulsive, misguided act sooner if she'd had access to guns.
38
I am appalled that a suicide prevention charity would have anything to do with an organization promoting gun ownership and keeping them in the home. Anyone providing financial or other support to this organization needs to stop now.
165
I provide some small financial support to my organization, the NRA, am a life member and I also donate to various “do good” charities. I am an active supporter and defender of the Constitution and in the past have held small leadership roles in the NRA. Some 80,000 of us terroriists will meet in Dallas this coming May to celebrate our freedom and our Constitution.
I truly regret the loss of a single innocent life, however complete safety and protection from ourselves is not possible. Three friends have killed themselves over the years, two by hanging and one by ingesting rat poison. I have also lost a very close relative to murder who was killed by a knife. No guns involved.
The key to suicide prevention lies with family and friends providing love and support and being aware of what our family and friends are experiencing.
1
Ed Williamson, blaming family and friends for not preventing suicides is not helpful as many suicide attempts are not predictable nor preventable, but that doesn't mean we can't work to reduce the incidence of suicide. Plus your personal anecdotal stories are not evidence that working to significantly reduce the risk of an impulsive suicide by removing guns from a home is in vain.
I come from a family of hunters and gun owners. My father-in-law had a loaded handgun in his house when he was undergoing treatment for cancer, which my husband removed after my FiL requested he do so, along with all of his other guns, thank god that he did. And my brother jumped off a bridge so I understand that guns are not the only means of killing yourself.
I am for reasonable gun ownership restrictions and regulations, which we currently do not have but many other civilized countries do have. We need to do all that we can to prevent suicides and mass killings in this country. The NRA is not a reasonable organization, evidenced by their recent recruitment videos, which appalled and frightened me. There is a middle ground, and the NRA is not it.
3
I couldn't stop thinking about your concern for suicides. A gun shot gives one a pretty good chance of succeeding and dying quickly. Otherwise the death determined individual might have to choose say, poison, gas, a knife - many choices but none so effective as a bullet.
15
The suicide rate in the US is similar to or less than other western nations which have far less access to legal guns. It is far lower than the Japan numbers where guns are practically non existent. While people in the US may choose guns because of relative availability global number suggest that reducing legal gun access would only change methods of suicide not the rate. Groups like Brady exist to reduce and eventually ban civilian ownership of guns. Trying switch the conversation to suicides is just a back door to their true objectives.
17
Other methods are FAR less effective. Read the article.
10
Suicide rate for Japan is 15.4 per 100,000 26 out of 183.
Suicide rate for US is 12.6 per 100,000 48 out of 183.
Japan has a history of suicide as being a honorable act.
US has a history of suicide as an act to end unbearable pain.
Facts and history are important to pay attention to when making a point
14
About two years ago, I received a call from our local police advising me that a man who rented from me had taken his life. His son, a young man I met later, sensed something was wrong when his father did not go to work, as they worked for the same company.
When Jim contacted me about the home I had for rent, he explained that he was a quiet person, how he enjoyed writing in his spare time. He relished the idea of living farther out, a little closer to the country than where he was living. He also shared that he had a concealed gun permit, the first time any renter had confided such a thing, but I thought that sadly it is not uncommon in our times. His references were excellent, he had a fine stable job in a position of some authority.
Later as I came to know Jim, he confided that he had been in a terrible depression after his divorce from his wife of twenty years, and that only through the companionship of his children, was he able to get through this.
Jim took his own life the day after Valentines Day, I know only that he was dating a woman seriously, with hopes that it would work out.
His suicide jarred me in a way I have never experienced. I admired his son's courage, a son who came to the home, saw his father dead through a window, and broke through the front door. When the police came on that day, this young man ran out with tears streaming and hugged the police officer.
Suicide affects so many, his family, his friends, and all who knew him.
287
After the suicide of one in our family, I was speaking with a friend and co-worker. He had been a police officer before working with us and recounted having stopped someone for a minor traffic violation, and how as he was approaching the car, that person shot himself, fatally.
My friend then wondered aloud if anyone would ever kill himself if he fully realized the effect it would have on those around him. I wonder, too.
This is unfortunate, but how about starting your own charity to prevent suicides. I read that your relative stole a gun from someone else, now perhaps education on keeping guns properly stored, and having gun locks could help. Gun "control" is in general not constitutional, while I don't own a gun I do support the constitution. Now another possibility would be to pressure states to actually properly support the "gun control" federal laws. By keeping the databases properly maintained and cooperating with federal law enforcement.
7
"Gun control" may not be constitutional, but universal background checks, gun registration, mandatory liability insurance, mandatory training and safe storage laws, waiting periods, prohibition of ownership for all domestic violence misdemeanants, and prohibition of certain classes of guns and ammunition are all constitutional measures.
42
Gun control IS constitutional. Antonin Scalia said so in the Heller decision.
"Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms."
54
Those measures you list are unconstitutional. One doesn't put limits on an unalienable right. Mandatory liability insurance is certainly an infringement of an individual's right to own a gun, so is mandatory training and registration.
2
Money is more influential than dead people. The NRA trumps the epidemic of gun related deaths through its campaign contributions to mostly Republican legislators despite the overwhelming desire of the people in this country for sane gun safety legislation.
188
What specifically would you suggest? And how about making sure it is constitutional as well. I think we have mostly pretty good laws, the problem being that those that don't want to obey such can easily find a way around any that you might propose. I see about 25K per year, less than the 40K due to vehicles, and I bet way less than those due to criminal activities.
3
" .. While many choose to write off suicide victims as choosing their own fates, the reality is that many make impulsive choices that turned quickly irrevocable .."
So are drug overdoses. Are we to hire 250,000 federal workers to monitor that, too? When does this end? And what about the innocent, who have to live in high-crime areas that the Cuomo gang ignores?
We wish others would not commit suicide, take illegal drugs, smoke, heavily drink alcohol. They won't let us, help them. Well, we have to go on, and do the hard work of producing goods and services, for others.
6
The National Sports Shooting Foundation are legitimate, and established experts in gun safety. Your usage of the phrase "gun safety legislation" is a corruption and distortion of the word "safety". What you really mean is "gun control legislation".
5