Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hi, brain Stuff, Lauren bog Obam Here, I wanted to mention here at the top that today's episode deals with the subject of suicide, to give you the opportunity to skip this one if you would like, and hey, take care of yourself, okay. In preparing for today's episode, we spoke with one of Utah's top gun lobbyists, Clark a passion He never thought that he'd have a colleague at the Harvard School of
Public Health. Apascian is also chair of the Utah Shooting Sports Council and a certified instructor for Utah's concealed carry permit. In his experience, public health advocates have been liberal eggheads who sat squarely on the opposite side of the political divide over gun control. Appascian told us all would hear from them is lock up your guns, get rid of your guns. Guns are bad, And all they heard from us was guns are good, more guns. We need greater
access to guns. But then he met Kathy Barber, a suicide prevention expert with the Harvard Injury Control Research Unter, who shared a simple, yet startling statistic in Utah of all gun deaths are suicides. Apastian had dedicated his life to fire arm training, safety, and advocacy, but he had no idea that the vast majority of gun related deaths in his home state, and more than two thirds of gun deaths nationwide, weren't murders or hunting accidents, but suicide.
Apashian says, I had an epiphany. All the clamoring on both sides over homicides and the legal use of fire arms and accidents, the biggest bang for the buck if you want to decrease the number of gun deaths is going to be suicide. Nearly forty five thousand Americans die from suicide every year, and more than half of those
deaths come from guns. States with more guns per capita, like Utah, Montana, Idaho, and Colorado have higher suicide rates, not because gun owners are more likely to suffer from mental illness, but because suicide attempts with guns are nearly always fatal. That's why Barber at Harvard created the Means Matters campaign to explain the access to a gun in a moment of suicidal crisis can be the difference between
life and death. The decision to commit suicide happens surprisingly fast, with tent of suicide survivors saying only five minutes passed between the moment they decided to end things and the suicide attempt itself. In that five minutes, people may reach for the most lethal means they can get their hands on. If it's a gun, the suicide attempt will be fatal
between eighty five and n of the time. Other means aren't nearly as lethal it overdose of pills, for example, is deadly and only one point five percent of suicide attempts. Research shows that restricting access to a gun during an acute emotional crisis saves lives and gives people a chance to get help. Of suicide survivors do not go on to die by suicide, but for suicide prevention advocates like Barber.
To get the means Matters message into the community's hardest hit by gun related suicides, they had to cross a gaping political and cultural divide. When gun store owners and Second amend It supporters here words like restricting access to guns, they think of government intrusion, more laws and outsiders coming in to take their guns away. We also spoke with Robert Gibea, the CEO of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention or a f s P, which is the largest
such organization in the country. He freely admits that neither he nor any of his state chapter directors could walk into a gun store or firing range and start talking about the deadly relationship between firearms and suicide. He said, we have zero credibility. We don't know the language. Groups like the a f SP needed partners on the inside
who had that kind of credibility. In two thousand nine, Barbara helped launch the Gun Shop Project in New Hampshire, a two way collaboration between public health professionals and firearms dealers to educate the gun owning community on what they can do to keep friends and loved ones safe in
times of emotional crisis. Taking their lead from the Gun Shop Project, now in more than a dozen states, GIBEA and the a s FP joined verses with the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the nationwide trade association for the firearms industry, to raise awareness of what gun retailers and gun owners can do to identify the warning signs of mental stress and keep guns temporarily out of reach of people in crisis. Gibbia said the partnership gives us both access and credibility.
All of a sudden, our volunteers in that community are welcomed into that gun shop, and we've already provided materials to eight thousand retailers across the country. Jacqueline Clark owns the Bristle Cone Shooting Training and retail Center outside of Denver. She's worked closely with the Colorado chapter of the Gun Shop Project to make sure that the pamphlets and training materials addressing suicide prevention contain the type of language that
connects with her customers rather than alienating them. Clark said a lot of the mental health messaging tends to come from the left and hardcore Second Amendment people are always worried that they're trying to take their guns away or recommending that they surrender them and never getting them back.
Clark says that the people who frequent her gun range and retail store are responsible firearm owners who come in for a training class or to ask the staff a question because quote, they want to do a good job. The suicide prevention message that resonates with them is something
called the Eleventh Commandment. Any gun owner who has taken a basic safety course knows about the ten commandments of firearms safety, things like always pointing the gun in a safe direction and keeping your finger off the trigger until you're ready to shoot. Barbara at Harvard said the eleventh commandment is to be alert to signs of suicide risk in friends and family and help keep guns from them
until they've recovered. Once you say it, it makes sense to people, especially if they understand that you're not attacking guns. A pocean in Utah doesn't necessarily see suicide prevention as a gun safety issue. To him, gun safety is avoiding accidents by teaching both adults and children how to use and store a gun safely. With suicide, Apochian says, we're talking about purposefully grabbing a gun to do harm to ourselves.
It's a complete a different realm. He thinks, a more effective suicide prevention message follows the model used by campaigns against drunk driving. If your friends had too much to drink, aposhi And says, you take their keys and do whatever it takes to not let them drive home because you care about them. The same thing, he says if a friend is going through a painful divorce, just lost a job,
or is experiencing symptoms of PTSD. You go to their house, put your arm around them, tell them you love them and are worried about them, and suggest that you baby sit their guns for a few days, not take their guns away, but put them in temporary storage outside the home. The ultimate goal of suicide prevention partnerships between public health advocates and the firearms community is to make gun owners aware of the issue and to feel comfortable having those
hard conversations. There are no new laws being proposed or restrictions placed on access. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has run models showing that of half of Americans who buy a gun between now and get a pamphlet about suicide prevention, and only one in five of them actually read it, it will still save nine thousand lives. Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Clang. If you're in a bad place, I know how lonely
it can feel, but you're not alone. Reach out to a friend or family member, or google suicide prevention to find a number you can call, or even text or chat if you hate phones as much as I do. And of course, for more on this and lots of other topics, visit our home planet, how stuff works dot com