If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
About 4 million kids live in households with easy access to firearms. That concerns Dr. Maya Haasz, a pediatric emergency physician at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and a firearm researcher. She wanted to know about what adults think about the topic , and, in particular, adults who own guns and live with children.
“What I really want to find is ways that we could keep kids safer when they're living in households with firearms,” she said, “and just a way to have that conversation with families about how to keep kids safe around their firearms.”
Haasz turned to data collected in Colorado’s first-ever state firearm safety survey. She focused on roughly 500 adults who told surveyors last spring that they have someone 18 years or younger living with them. The analysis, published in the journal Pediatrics in September, revealed important differences between gun owners and those who did not own guns.
For example, adults with firearms were less likely to believe that having one in the house made it more dangerous. Similarly, only 48% of gun owners said they thought that suicide could be prevented, while 69% of non-gun-owners said it could.
“That's really important,” Haasz said. “There is this myth that if someone is going to try to kill themselves, that it's inevitable. And that is a myth.”
In Colorado, suicide is the leading cause of firearm deaths. Suicides also make up a large share of gun-related deaths among youth in the Mountain West. In Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, they account for more than three-quarters of firearm deaths between the ages of 10 and 19.
Haasz said the belief that suicide is not preventable could affect how people view proven strategies to decrease the risk. For example, gun owners were less likely than non-gun-owners to believe that temporarily removing a firearm in a time of crisis could prevent injury or death.
“That is really one of our best strategies for suicide prevention — just limiting access to firearms in that moment of crisis,” said Haasz.
However, gun owners seemed to have more faith in the secure storage of firearms. Nine out of 10 surveyed said doing so could prevent injury or death. That could present an opportunity for public health messengers to convey that strategies that work to prevent unintentional injuries can also prevent suicides.
The next step, Haasz said, is figuring out how to have those conversations.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
