By Melissa Serafin and Anne Li

Key findings and recommendations:  Firearm owners and national experts emphasized that firearm owners themselves are the most trusted messengers, including firearm-related groups and organizations (e.g., gun shops, hunting groups, firearm safety instructors). These messengers are best suited to provide legitimacy and ensure saliency of messaging efforts. ü National experts also described the importance of actively and authentically seeking partners within the firearm-owning community to collaborate on suicide prevention efforts Frame firearm suicide prevention messaging in a way that underscores gun rights. ü Firearm owners and national experts agreed that messaging should immediately convey the legitimacy of owning firearms. ü Additionally, messaging should avoid conveying the perception of anti-gun bias, including the idea that firearm access or ownership should be restricted. ü Firearm owners and experts also emphasized the importance of considering the heterogeneity of the firearm-owning community when crafting messaging and tailoring messages accordingly. Focus on raising mental health awareness, debunking myths, and addressing stigma. ü Firearm owners and national experts identified a need to improve understanding of mental health concerns; debunk myths about suicide, mental health, and mental health services; and address stigma. Additionally, they identified a need to help people have conversations about mental health and express concerns people may have about a loved one. ü They suggested incorporating content that could improve understanding of these topics within messaging efforts. ü However, some findings indicate that this type of information needs to be carefully crafted to ensure salience, as firearm owners may not view mental health and suicide as relevant to their personal lives. Share stories of lived experience. ü Firearm owners suggested incorporating real stories related to firearm suicide, seeking mental health support, and the potential consequences of unsafe storage. Additionally, they suggested that these stories should involve people with identities that firearm owners could identify with. ü They described how storytelling may be particularly effective in ensuring messaging resonates with firearm owners and dispelling myths about mental health, suicide, and safe storage.  

St. Paul: Wilder Foundation, 2022. 41p.

By Americans for Responsible Solutions Foundation; Law Center for Prevent Gun Violence

The evidence is clear: firearm access contributes greatly to suicide rates, with guns accounting for nearly half of all suicide deaths but just 5% of suicide attempts. As dispiriting as this statistic may be, beneath it lies hope—by taking steps to prevent suicidal people from accessing guns, the most lethal means of suicide, we can make a lifesaving difference. The solutions are already there. We just have to implement them. Confronting the Inevitability Myth represents the culmination of a yearlong project by the attorneys at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence to study and analyze suicide in America. We took a hard look at the numbers and the harrowing stories behind them, and identified the smart gun laws and intervention programs that are most effective at saving lives from suicide. And when you ensure that a person in mental crisis doesn't get their hands on a gun, you really are saving a life. As you'll learn in the coming pages, most people who attempt suicide with methods other than a firearm survive, and most survivors never attempt suicide again, going on to live long lives and contribute positively to society. In other words, the idea that suicide is inevitable is a myth, and a deadly one at that. We hope that this report will help dispel this myth, spark conversation, and motivate lawmakers and community leaders to adopt the strategies proven to prevent gun suicide.

Americans for Responsible Solutions Foundation; Law Center for Prevent Gun Violence, 2017. 92p.