Gun industry’s takeover silences group’s suicide prevention message
If you don’t like the messaging of a nonprofit group and you have lots of money, one tactic you might try is to neutralize it through a takeover or “partnership.” That’s what the Church of Scientology did to a group called the Cult Awareness Network in the 1990s — it effectively took over the management through a series of lawsuits. The gun lobby also knows how to hijack a potentially bothersome nonprofit.
A group called American Foundation for Suicide Prevention now finds itself silenced on the epidemiological issue of guns inside the home, thanks to a dubious partnership with a gun manufacturer association every bit as extremist as the National Rifle Association.
The National Sports Shooting Foundation is the more discreet cousin of the NRA, even though it spends roughly the same amount of money on lobbying every year. Based in the unlikely city of Newtown, Conn. — the site of the Sandy Hook shooting massacre — the shooting foundation represents about 13,000 gun dealers and shooting ranges; zealously advocates for the same kind of open-ended gun policies as its more notorious cousin; and sponsors the largest gun show in the United States, the annual SHOT Show in Las Vegas.
In August 2016, CEO Stephen L. Sanetti announced a partnership with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to “help reduce the misuse of firearms in America” though educational campaigns to gun owners. On the surface this seems like a good thing: a rare example of a gun lobbying group acknowledging a public health problem with its products.
The practical effect, however, has been to muzzle the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention in speaking about the well-documented link between guns in the home and the heightened risk of suicide.
Because of congressional restrictions on funding for gun-related public health inquiries, the suicide prevention foundation had been one of the few sources of independent research on this plague. It has also been a historic proponent of legislation allowing families to seek court-ordered gun confiscation from relatives who have announced an intent to commit suicide. This effort has been highly controversial within gun rights circles, as it amounts to a “taking” or “gun-grabbing.”
Having a gun in the home is associated with an increased risk of firearm suicide, regardless of the number of guns or whether they are kept secured. Yet, on the suicide prevention foundation’s website, when asked, “Is the partnership advocating no guns in the home?,” its answer is a confounding “no.”
The suicide prevention nonprofit won’t be talking about the well-known risks of firearm ownership any longer. The suicide prevention foundation’s chapters in all 50 states have since been forbidden to discuss the role of firearms in suicide (apart from promoting the new partnership with the gun industry trade association) or engage in any public outreach that might imply contact or cooperation with any groups, especially the Brady Campaign and Women Against Gun Violence.
“The main thing is that we are being extra careful about protecting what is a new and still developing relationship we have been building with the firearm owning community and industry leaders,” suicide prevention foundation Chief Medical Officer Christine Moutier said in an email to a dismissed member. “If we come across as crossing the line into the control space, then we could jeopardize our plan for how we can save lives through collaborative gun safety education in their own communities, and with the ‘endorsement’ of their own community and industry leaders.”
While gun killings get the headlines, suicide is the leading cause of gun deaths in the United States, claiming about 64 percent of the total each year. About half of these suicides — many of them spontaneous acts committed without forethought — are accomplished with firearms, generally those that are already inside the home.
While other institutions provide ample information about the clear link between suicide and firearms, the suicide prevention foundation has now gone silent, consistent with the relentless message from gun-touting organizations that the world is a dangerous place and that firearms in the house should always be ready to be thrown into the mix at a moment’s notice. The suicide prevention group, incredibly, has instructed chapter volunteers not to discuss or disseminate any information on suicide and guns until the shooting foundation has approved materials, which won’t be available for at least two years. What sort of nonprofit would allow this kind of prior restraint — and even censorship — from an outside organization with a strong financial and political interest in the outcome?
I have a personal connection to this. My step-grandfather — a depressed veteran of World War II — took his own life in an impulsive suicide made possible by a handgun right by his bedside. My girlfriend, Erin Dunkerly, lost her father to a gun-enabled suicide, and she later became one of multiple people removed from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Los Angeles Out of the Darkness fundraising board of directors for expressing concern about the public health implications of taking marching orders from a powerful gun lobby.
Those who have lost relatives to preventable gun suicides — and who have channeled their grief into something positive by volunteering for an anti-suicide nonprofit — now have to look at promotional photos of their group’s leaders at the annual Las Vegas gun show. This leaves them with a cold and chilling feeling, but the implications for the public are even more profound. Preventing gun-related suicide means being honest about the first and most obvious step: removing firearms from the home of those at risk. This is a message the gun lobby will never discuss — or tolerate partners who do.