To stop suicides, restrict gun access
Back in 2011, 23-year-old April Frankenberry Connor, of the Hudson Valley, told her mother that she was going to the mall to buy an electric blanket. Instead, she drove to a sporting store where she purchased a shotgun for $340, climbed into the back seat of her car in the parking lot and took her own life.
April’s story is beyond heartbreaking, but it was not inevitable. By addressing the primary factors that drive suicide risk, together, we can help prevent others from suffering a similar fate.
We are living in a time of rising suicide rates. The impact of these tragedies — the brutal, personal hurt and human loss — is enormous. A staggering 575,000 Americans died by suicide from 2000 to 2015, and more than half, nearly 300,000 people, took their lives with a gun.
While most people instinctively fear external threats — like a drunk driver on the road or a violent attacker — the reality is more Americans now die by suicide than in car crashes or murders. Our nation loses nearly three times as many young people to suicide than to cancer. And nationwide, suicide rates are rising by the year — up 27% since 2000.
Though a variety of factors drive people to attempt suicide, immediate access to guns is very often the determining factor in whether a person survives. This fact doesn’t fit with the persistent, damaging myth that suicides are inevitable — that suicidal people have reached a deliberate point of no return and are determined to die by any means.
The majority of people who attempt suicide without a gun survive the attempt or act to save their own life before it’s too late. And the vast majority of these survivors live out their lives without ever attempting suicide again. More than 90% of people who survive a suicide attempt do not die by suicide.
Very few people can speak of surviving a self-inflicted gunshot.
People are at least 40 times more likely to die if they attempt suicide with a gun instead of the two most common suicide methods — overdosing and self-cutting. This explains how gunshots account for a majority of U.S. suicide deaths even though they are used in
This is also why states with immediate, unrestricted access to guns suffer a hugely disproportionate share of our nation’s suicides.
The good news is that around the country, gun safety reforms and smart intervention programs have worked to prevent suicide by reducing at-risk people’s ability to easily and immediately acquire the most lethal means of suicide during moments of crisis.
As a new report by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence shows, these policy changes chart a clear path to saving lives.
One innovative new law that has been gaining traction in recent years as a way to prevent suicide is the Extreme Risk Protection Order law, which has been enacted in California, Washington and Oregon. The law allows family members and law enforcement to petition a judge to temporarily remove a person’s guns during a severe mental health crisis.
Since we know that suicide is often impulsive, making it more difficult for an at-risk person to obtain a weapon exponentially increases that person’s likelihood of survival.
Other gun policy reforms have been proven to save lives from suicide too. Universal background checks, for instance, help to keep people undergoing involuntary psychiatric treatment from acquiring guns.
Firearm waiting periods create a brief but crucial cooling off period and help guard against impulsive, suicidal gun purchases.
Efforts to keep children and teens from gaining unsupervised access to guns can meaningfully reduce the incidence of youth suicide.
Thankfully, the prognosis for most people who struggle with suicidal thoughts and behavior is hopeful. But as we mark National Suicide Prevention Month, our leaders can and must take action to save lives and address our nation’s firearm-suicide crisis. just 5% of suicide attempts.