Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m just too stupid to understand the guidance being put out there to help prevent people from ending their own lives with a gun. And gun suicide has become a serious issue among certain population groups, in particular veterans whose suicide rate is now at least three times higher than the suicide rate for non-veterans in the same age groups.
Worse, veterans tend to use a gun more frequently than other people as a life-ending device and the problem with a gun is that the odds that it will put you six feet under are 95%. No other means of committing suicide has odds of better than 50% and people who survive a suicide attempt generally go into treatment and report that they are glad to be alive.
So, recently the White House released a whole report on what the Administration is doing to reduce gun violence, and much of their activity involves working with the VA and other groups to address the issue of depressed veterans who have access to guns. And the report specifically cites a VA program called ‘Firearm Suicide Prevention and Lethal Means Safety,’ which you can look at right here.
So, I looked at this effort and what I saw is either so screwed up that I can’t believe it reflects any rational thought at all, or perhaps as I said above, I’m just too dumb to figure things out.
The program begins with a brief video which tells veterans that it’s okay to be pissed off at what people say to them about their military service because such comments usually don’t capture what a tour in some sh*thole like Iraq or Afghanistan is all about. But then the video goes on to show a Glock pistol and a voice-over which says, “A simple lock puts space between the thought [of suicide] and the trigger” while a cable lock is being affixed to the gun.
How much did the VA pay some advertising agency to produce this video and come up with such a clever phrase? I can only guess but what I happen to know for a fact is that YouTube has a bunch of amateur videos which show such locks being picked open in ten seconds of less.
You then go to a page which says that “a safe home environment can save lives,” and continues on with this statement: “most suicides occur in the home and involve firearms — by far the most common and lethal of the means used in suicides.”
So, how does the VA suggest that you make your home safe? Here’s what you should do: “Safe storage practices include using cable or trigger locks, storing firearms in a locked case or safe, and storing firearms and ammunition separately and locked.”
And if you need any further help to make your home safe from using a gun to commit suicide, the VA recommends that you consult the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) which has been promoting for years the idea that more guns in homes results in less crime.
Incidentally, the NSSF is located in Newtown CT, which happens to be the town where the massacre of 20 children and 4 adults took place at the elementary school just nine years ago. And what kind of gun did the shooter use to commit this unspeakable act of mass carnage? An AR-15 rifle which the NSSF has been saying for years is just a ‘sporting gun.’
This is the organization that the VA partners with to run a program on reducing gun suicide? Okay, okay, obviously I don’t get it. I’m just too dumb.
Unfortunately, had the VA gone out and put together a program to reduce gun suicides by aligning itself with a medical society like the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) or the American College of Surgeons (ACS) they would have found scant difference between what these groups say about preventing gun suicides as compared to what is promoted by the NSSF. Want to keep people from shooting themselves with guns? Lock the guns up. It’s as simple as that, according to ACEP and ACS.
I guess I’m just too stupid to understand how you can keep guns around the home and not worry about someone getting hurt. The fact that solid, evidence-based research shows that guns in the home, locked or unlocked, represent a health risk, just proves that I’m not the only idiot out there.
Dec 16, 2021 @ 12:24:52
There is a project out this way that advertises gun shops that will store guns during a crisis** and just get the damn guns out of the house.
I don’t understand the idea of just putting a cable lock on a gun to prevent suicide. If I have a cable lock, I also have the key, right? And for a few bucks, someone can buy a bolt cutter.
** https://cdphe.colorado.gov/suicide-prevention/gun-safety-and-suicide
Dec 16, 2021 @ 12:33:19
OYE VEY! The NEJM article from 93 is a classic and should be required reading for anyone interested in GV. The problem is that so many of those who write about guns have never seen them up close and personal. As I Keep saying “It’s
the guns stupid, it’s the guns.”
Dec 16, 2021 @ 14:37:47
The NSFF has a robust firearms safety and suicide prevention programs. However, Mike glosses over that point in this article.
Who else facilitates gun safety more?
Dec 16, 2021 @ 15:54:44
Kleck and Hogan (1999) did a critique of Hellerman and I have asked the author for a copy as it is paywalled.
Dec 19, 2021 @ 10:56:01
From Kleck and Hogan, 1999. Nothing against Art Kellerman, but when you play with case control studies, its easy to end up all over the map depending on what you measure, who are your cases and controls, etc. So here is another interpretation about the relationship between guns and homicide. The paper is paywalled, but I emailed Gary Kleck, who is now emeritus, and he emailed me a copy.
Abstract:
“Does gun ownership increase the likelihood that a person will commit a homicide? Findings from a recent case-control study (Kellermann et al. 1993) were interpreted as indicating that persons who lived in households with guns were 2.7 times as likely to become homicide victims as persons in households without guns. Problems with that study are identified, and a different approach is described. Survey data on a nationally representative sample of persons in prison for criminal homicide were compared with data on a nationally representative sample of the general population, in the first national case-control study of homicide. A logistic regression analysis was performed on the data, with the dependent variable measuring whether the subject was a killer, and the key independent variable being whether the person owned a gun. Control variables included age, sex, race, Hispanic ethnicity, income, education, marital status, region, veteran status, and whether the subject had children. Results indicated that gun ownership had a weak (odds ratio = 1.36) and unstable relationship with homicidal behavior, which was at least partly spurious. The promise and pitfalls of case-control research are discussed.”
The strongest relationship between guns and death I’ve seen replicated all over the place is with suicide, for what should be obvious reasons. Unlike pills or other forms which could give you some time to reconsider or be rescued (in my grandfather’s case, my grandmother discovered him unconscious after a bottle of pills and the ER folks revived him), if you pull the trigger and hit the target, you have success
.
Oh, and my grandpa, an incredibly hard working immigrant who built his own house, worked an 8 hr shift in an auto factory and then came home to tend a huge garden, was tired of suffering from debilitating cancer. So he made sure grandma was fast asleep the second time around, when he successfully put out the lights with a stash of pills he had hidden.
Happy Holidays, all.
Dec 19, 2021 @ 12:02:59
Oh, apologies. The citation albeit behind a paywall..
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3097256
Dec 16, 2021 @ 18:21:46
TRUST
My experience when dealing with military veterans (I are one)…it’s trust in the government, or the lack thereof. If you think about it most of the surviving military veterans are now from the Vietnam War and on. As I look at our government and how they’ve treated the veterans is shameful. With the exception of many actions taken by Trump, i.e. medical treatment/hospitals, pay, etc.
We lost the Vietnam war to farmers dressed in open-toe shoes carrying weapons that were invented in the 1940’s. Hell, they didn’t even have an air force. This war was started by President Kennedy with no strategy on how to win or even get out.
Now the war we just got out of, Afghanistan, a war that again we were fighting farmers dressed in open-toe shoes, carrying weapons that were invented in 1940’s, Hell, they too didn’t even have an air force. This war was started by President Bush with no strategy on how to win or get out. (oh, we even left Americans behind in this war)
In 2013 Obama said he would not wait for Congress to act on gun control and unilaterally imposed 23 executive actions on guns. The reason…they would help save lives.
Obama was so hell-bent on destroying the Second Amendment in any way possible that under his administration the Veterans Administration implemented a program to designate veterans as “prohibited persons” when they have a fiduciary assigned to administer their VA benefits. How will the VA gather information to meet the requirements of this program? Counseling sessions. When a military veteran is meeting with mental advisors and he/she says the wrong thing…on your way to being put on the “prohibited persons” list. What trust can one have with a mental counselor when the veterans know that they may be placed on the “prohibited persons” list?
So those who have never served this country or those who are military deserters have no idea how little trust veterans have for their government. The government lied to them about Vietnam, lied to them about Afghanistan, and now threatening them when they go in for mental treatment.
It all comes down to TRUST!!!
Dec 16, 2021 @ 23:41:18
Hi Richard. Even the mental health community rejected the Veteran’s Administration Policy. It was too broad a brush but the Left uncritically praised it.
https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/defense/295484-va-is-restricting-veterans-gun-rights-without-due-process
Dec 17, 2021 @ 13:13:21
Khal, thank you for the link.
I’ve read the article and noted it starts out with…”(VA) has placed gun restrictions on thousands of veterans without due process, and Congress needs to address the matter.” It goes on to say “the VA has used law to the detriment of many veterans in its implementation…” and “The VA simply reports the veteran to the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check (NICS) system and makes the “mentally defective” judgment of the veteran by default.”
The article reports that the VA has stepped out of bounds on this issue. Also says that the VA may continue to expand its murky actions into other categories of our lives. Then the last paragraph states “It is not likely this issue will be resolved this year…” (this year being 2016)
In February 2017 the House repealed a handful of regulations issued in President Barack Obama’s final months in office. The vote to repeal the regulation was 235 – 180. The key here is that the rule established the criteria for the Social Security Administration to follow when forwarding names for the criminal background check system.
To me that all sounds good. However, the problem is the repeal was directed at the Social Security Administration. The acting secretary of SSA assured Congress that the agency did not intend to follow the lead of the Veteran’s Administration and arbitrarily report every beneficiary that had another party appointed to assist the beneficiary with management of finances.
VA policy requires that an individual who receives VA MONETARY BENEFITS and who “lacks the mental capacity to manage his or her own financial affairs regarding disbursement of funds without limitation, and is either rated incompetent by VA be reported to NICS.
I once was told of a woman who walked into her bedroom and saw her husband in bed with another woman. The husband immediately jumped up and said…I can explain, who are you going to believe, you lying eyes or me?
Again, it comes down to trust.