It’s time that we talk about an ugly elephant in the room in the firearms community.
That elephant? Gun suicides.
Now, we’re not going to be getting into how political leftists like to lump suicides into their gun violence statistics to warp the way that the firearms community is perceived. They do that, of course, to make us look like we’re violent and to try to make gun violence look worse than it is.
What we’re going to be talking about today, though, is what the gun suicide statistics really are and an odd thing about those statistics (hat tip to here for the lead). Cassandra McBride writes,
More than half of all gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides, except among Black and Hispanic Americans, where firearm homicides are more prevalent. Suicide-related gun deaths increase significantly with age, while homicide-related deaths tend to decline in older populations.
To be more specific, again from McBride:
In 2023, 83% of all gun deaths among white Americans were suicides, compared to 67% among Asians, 46% among Native Americans, 38% among Hispanics, and only 17% among Black Americans. This demonstrates a significant disparity in how firearm-related deaths are distributed among racial groups.
Now, I can’t tell you why different racial groups have such different results in terms of the percentage of deaths by firearm that were suicide, and we can speculate as to why there is that disparity between groups. Certainly, one side of the political aisle will attribute the higher proportion of Hispanics and black Americans who die by firearm homicide instead of suicide to factors like wealth inequality and other “social justice” issues. The other side will say that we need to focus on issues specific to the individual, their thinking, and their mental health instead of external issues to explain that difference.
Whatever the actual factors, it seems pretty clear that emphasizing getting people the sense of community and mental health resources that they need are the real solutions rather than political leftists’ attempts at gun control (which don’t actually decrease gun violence rates anyway).
Tragically, though, anti-2A politicians and bureaucrats will continue to focus on “solutions” that only make the problem worse instead of trying to get to the root of the problem with gun violence and suicides. The real solutions have to do with building up better, stronger, mentally healthy and resilient individuals. And that doesn’t happen when you keep telling them that they are helpless victims as leftists do.
My youngest son died by suicide via handgun on March 6, 2020. As a 17 year old white male he represents one of the high risk individuals.
Our family has subsequently found healing through the Bwiti tradition and Iboga.
By the way, we carry daily, and moved to Montana in order to exercise our rights more fully.
I had a friend 72 years old. He was an avid anti gunner. I set him up with a 9mm camp rifle years ago when things were shaky. He said he wanted it to protect his wife. (A suprise but….)
Anyway, a few years back I got a call that he needed to see me. I went and we had an hours long conversation about suicide ( his).
He was beyond determined. I ask him how he was planning to do this deed. He replied that he was going to shoot himself right there in his living room easy chair. I told him that he was really nuts. The mess that he would make would take weeks to clean up. And, if he didn’t do a good job his wife would probably kill him for the headaches!
I was hoping that that would belay his decision as he was near incapable of getting around. I was wrong. That night he crawled out on the back porch and did it.
I found out days later that the pain pills that he relied on for the last 30 years were denied him because he might become addicted.
I’m sure this is listed as a gun death. This was a death that was going to happen. The gun was just a tool to that end. Blame it on the evil gun and not the medical system.
I really believe they knew by taking his meds that it would cause him to follow through with something drastic.