The Trace:
The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry’s top trade group, is partnering for the first time with the country’s leading suicide prevention organization. The ambitious goal of the collaboration: averting nearly 10,000 deaths over the next decade.
The program, initiated by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, will strive to educate people on the risk factors and warning signs of suicide, and provide guidance on how best to talk to someone who may be considering trying to end his or her own life, says Robert Gebbia, the chief executive of AFSP.
Notably, the program will also recommend blocking family members who are suicidal from accessing firearms by, for example, emphasizing the importance of securely locking guns away. It is not clear whether the AFSP guidance will include specific suggestions about how to remove weapons from potentially suicidal people. The NSSF, which represents thousands of gun dealers and manufacturers, provided input into the program and is also promoting it.
Gun groups have traditionally been reluctant to acknowledge that the presence of a firearm poses an increased risk to people who are considering taking their own lives. Gebbia says buy-in from the NSSF is especially important in persuading people that blocking gun access in certain situations is about saving lives, not depriving people of their rights.
“This isn’t giving up the firearm forever. It’s during that crisis,” Gebbia tells The Trace. “This is not a Second Amendment issue. It’s a way to make sure that people at risk of suicide shouldn’t have access to any of the means,” he says.
“Any of the means.” So let’s see. Does that mean that an NSSF representative is going to escort potential suicide victims 24 hours per day to ensure that they don’t walk out on any bridges? Because he said, “any of the means.” And that means any of the means, because that’s what he said.
Or perhaps the NSSF should focus on national shooting sports, since their focus is supposed to be on national shooting sports, not playing doctor or filling in for missing or irresponsible family members.
