Gun sellers work to curb firearm suicides, a leading cause of death in rural areas
John Yule, 53, manages Wildlife Sport Outfitters, a hunting and fishing supply store on the edge of Manchester, N.H., and is “deeply involved in the Second Amendment community.”
But six years ago, while listening to a public radio story, Yule heard about a way he could tackle a familiar problem — the high rates of suicide in rural areas like some nearby in his state — through the New Hampshire Firearms Safety Coalition.
He decided to get involved.
Now he’s part of a team of people on the front lines — gun dealers like himself who, in many cases, claim a rural customer base — trying a simple but radical approach to curb rates of suicide, the nation’s 10th-leading cause of death.
Their methods involve noticing certain “tells” that indicate a customer is shopping for a firearm with suicide in mind. Their goal is to keep guns, the most common method of suicide, out of the hands of those they deem at risk.
“We’re not trying to step on anyone’s toes or deny them any rights. [But] you can guide them, or suggest to them or talk them into a different approach,” Yule said. He has these conversations only with people he believes are moving toward this tragic end.
A study, published Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health, underscored the need for such efforts.
Across the country, suicide rates are higher in rural areas than in urban centers. In 2015, rural communities saw 19 people per 100,000 kill themselves, compared with 11 per 100,000 in urban areas, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s injury statistics database.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore used the state medical examiner’s data tracking all suiciderelated deaths to tease out the role firearms play in that disparity. They analyzed a sample of about 6,200 Maryland residents, age 15 and older, and found that when gun-related suicides were excluded, there was no significant difference in rates between rural and urban areas.
“This does point to the important role that guns play in the rural suicide rate,” said Paul Nestadt, a postdoctoral student at Hopkins and the study’s lead author. “It also suggests where we might focus public health.”
Researchers — both involved with the study and unaffiliated — said those findings have national significance, even though Maryland has a lower suicide rate than other states and access to mental health care is better in rural Maryland than in other states’ rural areas.
More analysis is needed, but many said the study provides more evidence that preventing rural suicides means tackling the problem of suicide by firearm.
Gun ownership is more common in rural parts of the country, which may explain why researchers detected the striking ruralvs.-urban difference in suicide rates. But that speaks to another challenge. Limiting firearm-related suicide means limiting access to firearms — which can generate a lot of pushback.
“We’re up against something really difficult in the United States, because the key to success is proper storage, or removal of firearms from homes where somebody has a mental illness or is imminently suicidal,” said Jameson Hirsch, an associate professor of clinical psychology at East Tennessee State University, who researches suicide prevention but was not involved with this study. “[But] it’s such a tough sell. … You want to respect people’s rights.”
Still, suicide attempts that involve a firearm are the most likely to end in death.
“In rural areas, we need to be aware of the outsize role that gun safety and availability play,” Nestadt said. “If we fail to recognize the role of guns in suicides, we are missing an opportunity to prevent death.”