"Colorado Gun Shop Project": NPR story on Colorado Gun Shops Work Together To Prevent Suicides

[funkymonkey1111]

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-s...ntent=20160903

It's ladies night at the Centennial Gun Club in a suburb of Denver. More than 80 women are here for safety instruction and target practice.
Tonight the club is offering more than shooting, though. The women rotate through the firing range, and in another large room, they hear a sobering presentation from emergency room doctor Emmy Betz. She's part of a collaboration between gun shops and public health leaders in the state to help prevent suicide.
"If you've been touched by suicide somehow, if you could, raise your hand," she asks. About half the hands go up.
Colorado has the nation's seventh-highest suicide rate. In a typical year, more than half involve guns. Research suggests suicide is often an impulsive act, Betz says, and attempts are much more likely to be lethal when a firearm is used. If people survive a suicide attempt, they are far less likely to eventually die from suicide.
"Unfortunately, with firearms typically there's not that second chance," she says.


Dr. Emmy Betz works in the Emergency Department at the University of Colorado Hospital and also is part of the Colorado Gun Shop Project.

John Daley/Colorado Public Radio

There's a new push in the national conversation about gun violence that is attempting to sidestep the political rancor, to find common ground on one thing — guns and suicide. The campaign in Colorado is called the Colorado Gun Shop Project.
Centennial Gun Club is one of 46 on board. The project formally started in the summer of 2014, modeled after a similar one by the New Hampshire Firearm Safety Coalition.
During Betz's talk, organizers hand out Life Savers candies to drive home the message. Gun owner Lily Richardson says she thinks the information could do just that: save lives. "I think those who are aware and taking the initiative to talk about it can help make the difference," she says.
Nancy Dibiaggio, a new gun owner, agrees. "It's a big issue, and I think it's great Colorado is jumping on the wagon with this."
Dick Abramson, Centennial's owner, says he welcomes the opportunity to facilitate the discussion. "The difficulty is that it's not a topic people want to just bring up and talk about over the cocktail table, right?"
He says workers at his store have refused to sell a gun to someone they're concerned about or feel is having an especially bad day. "My honest feeling is this is a nonpartisan issue," he says. "This is something that everybody can get behind. It should be a universal concern of everyone."


Shooters take aim on Monday Night Bowling Pin Shoot at the firing range of the Bristlecone Shooting, Training and Retail Center in Lakewood, Colo.

John Daley/Colorado Public Radio

In another Denver suburb, the Bristlecone Shooting, Training and Retail Center is also part of the project. At its range, shooters take target practice at bowling pins lined up on the far wall.
In the shop's showroom, store owner Jacquelyn Clark shows off literature on display "that talks about suicide prevention and what to do if somebody you know or you yourself are in crisis," she says.
A poster reads, Gun Owners Can Help! Under a photo of a lone elk in the mountains, it lists signs someone may be suicidal and a phone number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
Clark says there's now an 11th commandment on gun safety rules: Consider off-site storage — family, friends, some shooting clubs, police departments or gun shops — if a family member may be suicidal. Clark says most people don't realize that the majority of gun deaths are not homicides but suicide.
A survey of hospital emergency rooms by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2011 found an estimated 21,175 suicides involving firearms compared with 11,208 homicides involving guns.
"The gun community itself is more at risk than the regular community, not because gun owners tend to have more mental health issues but just because they have more access [to firearms]," Clark says.
Jarrod Hindman, director of the Suicide Prevention Resource Center in Colorado, says he appreciates that local gun advocates are taking the lead. "This is their project," he says. "We're just helping to facilitate the process."
More than 500 Coloradans took their own lives with a firearm in 2014, says Hindman, but talking about the role of guns is hard.
"Obviously this is a very contentious topic, and we've found a way to find middle ground in a topic where we didn't think there was a middle ground," he says.
And now, a large trade association for the firearms industry, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, is teaming up with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to develop a suicide prevention campaign for the gun group's 13,000 members. Their goal is to reduce the annual suicide rate by 20 percent in the next decade.

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Research suggests suicide is often an impulsive act, Betz says, and attempts are much more likely to be lethal when a firearm is used.

I see another attempt to associate guns with suicides. The subtext is if a gun weren't used we'd have less suicide (guns = more lethal suicide). It discounts the fact that successful suicides were the most committed and the gun is peripheral. Take away the gun, are those folks less committed? And you're still not helping the person who needs help which is where we should be focusing.

These folks may have the best intentions but I reject the attempt to associate suicide with guns.

[Ah Pook]

Clark says there's now an 11th commandment on gun safety rules: Consider off-site storage — family, friends, some shooting clubs, police departments or gun shops — if a family member may be suicidal. Clark says most people don't realize that the majority of gun deaths are not homicides but suicide.

How does this work since the 7/1/2013 laws took effect?

What are the stats on other forms of suicide? Autos, drugs, jumpers... Who is going to say suicide is a good thing? I'd be more sold if it weren't firearm specific. Shaky common ground.

[Aloha_Shooter]

Research suggests suicide is often an impulsive act, Betz says

That goes against all the suicide prevention training I've received over the past 15 or so years.

I see another attempt to associate guns with suicides. The subtext is if a gun weren't used we'd have less suicide (guns = more lethal suicide). It discounts the fact that successful suicides were the most committed and the gun is peripheral. Take away the gun, are those folks less committed? And you're still not helping the person who needs help which is where we should be focusing.

These folks may have the best intentions but I reject the attempt to associate suicide with guns.

This. I participate in the Discovery Channel's Influencer program -- the pitch was that we'd get to help choose the programs they choose to air but it's really more of a program to help them figure out how to market programs they've already decided to produce. This week I got to view previews for one called "Active Shooter"; you would think from the title that it would focus on survival strategies or looking at the mindset of active shooters. Nope, it focuses on testimony from the families of victims, survivors, and first responders. The whole segment appeared to me to be designed to make people feel bad about guns in general -- classic Soviet-style agitprop. After viewing the preview, I said I would never ever watch that show and that it was a horrible fit for Discovery (which used to educate people and make them think rather than convince them to feel ...). This NPR report sounds like more of the same and I think the gun ranges participating in it are insane.

[DavieD55]

It sounds like an organization of gun grabbing doctors looking change the hearts and minds of sheeple and fudd gun owners into believing that the Second Amendment is a public health crisis disease and not a god given unalienable right.


Wouldn't be surprised if there were a soros/bloomberg/watts/petraeus/kelly component here working behind a mask of good intentions.

[buffalobo]

How does "the gun community" have more access to guns and therefore are at greater risk?

Doesn't everyone who is not felon or otherwise restricted, have same access?

More poppycock BS from med industry and gun grabbers.

Too bad so many people are falling for it.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

[DenverGP]

man, the tinfoil is pretty thick around here....

[GilpinGuy]

Consider off-site storage

AKA: disarming yourself.

[Aloha_Shooter]

man, the tinfoil is pretty thick around here....

You're not necessarily paranoid when everyone IS out to get you. I've been watching the Left practice this kind of agitprop for decades so pardon me for seeing it and pointing it out when I see it again. It's really pretty obvious when they pull stuff like this so it boggles my mind somewhat when I see people falling for it again.
In the media, they have done everything from change the traditional colors used to depict the parties (red = Democxrats, blue = GOP) suddenly and without explanation in 1984 to refer to every distasteful social sector as "right wing" (e.g., claiming it was "right-wing conservatives" fighting against change and reform in Communist China).
Pseudo-science has increased and been shoved down the throats of schoolkids while colleges have transformed from places of enlightenment to indoctrination, complete with repression of First Amendment rights (locally, students at UCCS were told they couldn't question or debate the "science" in a course on climate change).
So, yes, I'm pretty skeptical of "suicide prevention" that focuses so much on guns and claims that suicide is an impulsive act against decades of being told it wasn't.

[Honey Badger282.8]

Many suicides are an impulsive act, and many aren't. It's not uncommon for an individual to have a major stressor in life, be suddenly overcome by it and not see a way out followed by a decision to take their life. Not all suicides are a capstone to a drawn out battle with depression. As such, most suicide training tends to focus on bystander intervention and how to spot warning signs of those individuals who are at risk, not necessarily how to intervene when people show no outward indicators of suicidal thought.

I'm not seeing anything nefarious with this project. YMMV.