Half of suicides were by gun; suicides by all methods rose sharply among minority youth

With suicides, including those by gun, the second-leading cause of death for 10- through 34-year-olds — and suicides surging by 35% during 20 years ending in 2019 — it’s important to raise awareness that suicides are preventable and that most of those survive an attempt do not try another.

That’s according to the Convergence Center for Policy Resolution, whose early December report, “Convergence Dialogue on Guns and Suicide Prevention,” highlights interventions, including safe gun storage and efforts to safeguard the mental health of young people and others who may be suicidal.

“A firearm doesn’t make someone want to kill themselves, but it means that in a moment of impulsivity, a feeling — maybe so down that they can’t see straight — if someone reaches for a gun, they’re unlikely to survive,” said Dr. Emmy Betz, an emergency physician and researcher at the University of Colorado School of Medicine emergency department physician and researcher who co-authored the report.

Convergence Senior Director Russell Krumnow, who leads the organization's gun suicide prevention project, wrote via email that suicide isn't a foregone conclusion for those who are considering it. Action can be taken, including, "Education for gun owners about lethal means safety. [Making] safer storage options available. [Providing] ways to temporarily have guns stored outside the home during a crisis.

The report, he continued, "calls for credible messengers to engage gun owners about these solutions. That means meeting them where they are — with information at gun ranges or gun shops and with folks they can identify with and relate to. Veterans speaking to other veterans about their experiences to normalize getting help during a tough time. Houses of worship reaching people in their community with mental health resources."

Guns were used in roughly 50% of the 47,511 suicides nationwide in 2019, the last year for which data is available. That made guns the 10th leading cause of death in America.

Almost all suicide attempts by gun are deadly; guns in homes raise risks

Its additional key findings, based on the 2019 data, include these:

• 90% of suicide attempts with a gun were fatal.
• Suicide rates were highest among Indigenous Americans, including adolescents and young adults.
• Suicide rates were second-highest among whites, who had the highest rate of gun suicides; 85 percent of all suicides by firearm involved whites.
• LGBTQ youth attempted suicide four times more often than their heterosexual peers.
• Since 1993, suicide by all methods rose to the 10th leading cause from the 14th leading cause of death for 5- to 11-year-old among Black children. (Blacks died by suicide less often per capita than other racial groups, but the rates had been increasing “substantially and persistently” among Black adolescents.)
• Black teen males were 1.04 and Black teen females were 1.02 times more likely to attempt suicide than were adolescents of other races.
• Roughly 70% of veteran suicides involved a gun. (Men aged 18 through 34 accounted for 1.2 million and women of those same ages for 269,000 U.S. veterans, according to Statista.)
• Veteran suicide rates were twice that of non-veterans.
• Among survivors of suicide attempts, whether by gun or other methods, 90% did not re-attempt suicide.

The report results, in part, from a year-long dialogue by representatives of 14 organizations or sectors, including gun owners and enthusiasts and suicide prevention experts.

Having a gun in the household increases the risk of a gun suicide in that home, wrote the authors who also sought to shatter some myths about suicide. Chief among that is that persons who died by suicide also have a diagnosed mental illness.

The authors wrote that participants in that year-long  dialogue entered the process feeling “caricatured,” regardless of their viewpoints on guns: “Some in the group were less familiar with guns and expressed their lack of knowledge, while some raised the ways gun ownership has been viewed through a racialized lens and how all gun owners don’t receive the same deference and good faith assumptions. Others made clear [that] labels like ‘gun control’ and ‘weapons of war’ and even ‘common sense solutions’ can be off-putting and the importance of addressing people on terms that resonate for them.”

The report spotlights several organizations that are addressing gun-suicide prevention, including Gun Shop Project, Celebrating Life Suicide Surveillance System of the White Apache tribe, Center for Gun Rights & Responsibility and Counseling on Access to Lethal Means.

A partnership between the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, two organizations participating in the year-long dialogue, has been developing language for public awareness efforts that is designed specifically for gun-owning parents about teen suicide prevention and how to lock up their firearms.

Betz called Convergence’s dialogue itself innovative, “recognizing,” she said, “that nobody wants to lose a child, nobody wants to lose a family member or a loved one.”

JJIE editor Katti Gray contributed to this report.