Some links regarding suicide and firearms:

[petronius]

There is a great big noisy thread in LBN regarding firearms and suicide, and there are a few links I thought belonged in here:

This NY Times Magazine article from 2008 was very interesting to me, and I thought worth the read.

Also, there's a lot of material at this Harvard (HSPS) Means Matter page, which DanTex posted in that thread. I was particularly interested in the Gun Shop Project, since I do think that gun store and range operators may be a viable point of intervention in some cases.

My take away is that it's important to understand how impulsive many suicide attempts can be, and how a delay or interruption (or survival) of a first attempt will often be life-saving. Intervention and removal of means is particularly important when the means is particularly effective (as firearms are).

I do not support policies that are intended to reduce, interfere with, or make more difficult gun ownership in general - even if the purpose is the laudable goal of suicide prevention. However, it seems that there are some strategies that are acceptable:

• a brief waiting period (at least for a first gun purchase),
• universal background checks (with efforts made to get everyone adjudicated to be a/in danger into the system),
• suicide-prevention education and training materials for/at gun shops and ranges,
• systems to remove firearms (temporarily, and with judicial protection) from those at risk,
• help for families and caregivers in recognizing danger and reducing means,
• obviously a much better health care system, and
• most most most importantly careful thought about storage and access by individual gun owners...

[NYC_SKP]

1. Great suggestions, reasonable and sensible.

And I think these would be achievable and have results in short order.

Thanks!