Shooting Group Pledges Money for Suicide Prevention

Effort seeks to avert 10,000 deaths over the next decade

Posted 8 years ago

By Reed Gilchrist

184 Views

Shooting Group Pledges Money for Suicide Prevention

Mental health and suicide prevention is taking center stage in a new campaign funded by the National Shooting Sports Foundation. This top trade group in the gun industry is partnering with the country’s leading suicide prevention organization, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Together the partnership has the goal of averting nearly 10,000 deaths by suicide over the next decade.

AFSP sought out the gun group for this partnership, hoping to help open up a wider conversation about how to keep guns out of the hands of those who may be suicidal. Gun groups have traditionally been reluctant to enter into a discussion about how access to firearms increases the risk of suicide, arguing that people who are considering taking their own lives will find a way whether they have guns or not. The groups are hoping to educate people on the risk factors and warning signs of suicide, and provide guidance on how best to talk to someone who may be considering trying to end his or her own life.

Robert Gebbia, the chief executive of AFSP, says the cooperation of the NSSF is especially important in helping people understand that this is not about blocking people’s rightful access to guns, but in helping people who have a mental illness and possibly, hopefully, saving lives. The NSSF is already promoting the partnership. The NSSF blog says that suicide accounts for nearly two-thirds of all firearm fatalities annually, making it a topic that deserves attention.

The blog announcement goes on to say that now is an appropriate time for this partnership to embark on a first-of-its-kind national plan to “build and implement public education resources for firearms retailers, shooting ranges and the firearms-owning community about suicide prevention and firearms.”

The specific guidance that the AFSP will promote has not yet been determined, but NSSF’s announcement says their efforts will involve firearms retailers and shooting ranges utilizing AFSP-NSSF jointly developed strategies and resources to provide materials to firearm owners about warning signs, prevention resources and secure firearms storage options. “Experts tell us that suicide results from the culmination of several health and life factors, with the decision to act often being made in minutes. Keeping firearms securely stored puts space between the period of risk and the means to act, and sometimes that space can help save a life,” says the announcement

Gebbia makes it clear that this is not a Second Amendment issue. Statistics show that more than half of all suicides in the U.S. are carried out with a firearm. In 2014, about 87 percent of gun suicide attempts were fatal, compared to just three percent of attempts by drug overdoses, according to an analysis of Centers for Disease Control data.

The program is an arm of the AFSP’s Project 2025, which aims to reduce the suicide rate by 20 percent.

Prior to 2015, the AFSP did not work with gun industry groups because, according to Nancy Farrell, chair of AFSP’s National Board of Directors, “we were afraid that we would become enmeshed in other political issues.”

But, seeing the suicide rates climb in recent years, up 13 percent between 2007 and 2013, led them to reevaluate this stance.