I sometimes converse with Jenny and Emmy (and we exchange email and follow each other on X) so I am not surprised they would be working on ecumenical discussions. I really am curious as to the others. In confidence, of course.
I appreciate the good intentions here, but the conversation is adrift if it doesn't acknowledge an important truth: Michael Bloomberg has pumped untold millions of dollars into the academic sphere, which has tilted much of the "research" there towards supporting its preordained corporate conclusions (the master gun control narrative that would be achieved through a combination of thick bureaucracy and broad prohibitions), instead of approaching the research with wide-open eyes and a willingness to follow the data. Without this bias being clearly put on the table and acknowledged, I have a hard time giving credence to the opinions of those on the take.
That's why I carefully pick and choose what bits of academia I bring into my world—and, as I've said before, why I was happy to invite you in, David.
I can speak a bit to what Walk the Talk America is trying to do regarding the stigma that keeps gun owners out of care. We hypothesize that the (increasing) firearm suicide rate is due in part to firearms owners, which includes police, corrections, and military, avoiding counseling because of the presence of ERPO laws and other policies. To your point, the funders of research to date have only funded questions about policy interventions with the a priori presumption that restriction is beneficial, always. They have yet to ask whether these policies and laws are deleterious to care access, so that is part of what we're trying to change in the research culture. In other words, we would like the scientists to ask different questions. But we have to find someone (not Bloomberg) to fund the studies.
We did our own surveys, and the numbers are robust, but we have limitations because they are not of the best fidelity due to their own nature. The most recent one has been analyzed by a data person and the analysis will be posted when the full report is published.
One of the difficult Catch-22s in this space is that it’s “the gun” (whether gun rights or gun violence) that creates the opening for the conversation (or argument—depending on how that goes), but in my experience, focusing exclusively on “the gun” (again, whether its gun rights or gun violence) can be a way to avoid an even more difficult conversation….all the while patting ourselves on the back that we had “hard conversations” about guns in society. In this specific context of suicide, I really detest that for at least some in this space, the interest in addressing gun suicide seems to stop as soon as the gun is removed. Does that address the underlying mental health condition? The fact that tens of thousands of people in the US (not to even mention global suicide rates) feel their lives are not worth living? That they are disposable? That it doesn’t matter if they exit the planet? Well, to me, that’s the really hard conversation that very few want to directly engage, and while I do think there are definitely cases where removing firearms/safe storage can prevent a suicide and that is absolutely PART of the solution, there’s also no world in which simply removing firearms, without quality mental health treatment or other kind of social support or deep-rooted strategies of prevention, is going to address the pain and suffering that people are trying to end by turning guns on themselves. As you rightly note, the current framework not only doesn’t address that—it reinforces the stigma, shame and silence surrounding suicidal ideation that further isolates people.
As a guy who works in suicide prevention, I'm of the opinion that we should be working ourselves out of a job by trying to get upstream from the moment of crisis, and to be teaching people how to stay healthy, rather than merely be not-despondent. Yet that's what much of suicide prevention does, and the grift continues.
One way to combat this is to get people in for real, actual depth work so they can figure out *why* they became suicidal in the first place...but we can't do that if active policy barriers keep people out of the clinical office.
Amen to that, and that's one reason I think ERPO/Red Flag laws are a double edged sword as far as suicide prevention. Do they result in people being fearful of seeking out help for suicidal ideation or depression out of fear of wearing that scarlet letter?
Secondly I think the gun control organizations often push for ERPO laws not because they really care so much about suicide prevention as they do gun control, because it is just one more tool in the toolbox to disarm people, or as Jenny says, "focusing exclusively on “the gun”. There are some organizations that work on suicide prevention for gun owners while respecting people's rights, but these are small organizations, not the major gun control or gun rights groups.
Guns are admittedly at the crux of suicide prevention at the point of the act because firearms are pretty much a guarantee to the Hereafter if used for suicide. Plus, suicides can be momentary impulses rather than someone carefully considering quality of life. So with a gun, the impulse means there are not second thoughts. How to work with gun owners for their own good in advance of the crisis rather than using suicide as a bludgeon for more gun control is the question.
Fortunately, New Mexico has a right to die law and in fact, a friend of ours has a partner who has, with diminished quality of life, made that decision and has the drugs to do it, legally. Just a question of when. But another couple we know as good friends had a son who came back from active combat duty in Iraq/Afghanistan, was doing fine for a while, and then just turned out the lights. He didn't have the help he needed.
Is it possible to even sufficiently address suicide, the ultimate human right to self-determination (which is unenumerated, and in turn, denied & disparaged in spite of 9A) with firearms, in the minds of those who conspire in equal measure against the human right to effective self-defense with firearms?
P.S. This was my first Substack comment, so please forgive the threading placement.
That's a moral question, and one worth discussing for sure, but it also gets into whether or not *any* laws inhibiting human choice should be enforced, but that's too anarchic for me or for this medium. So for now the fundamental presumption in this country is that lives are worth saving (don't get me started on Canada and some of the Scandinavian countries) and we will make every effort to communicate that message. This is reflected in mandated reporter laws and such.
In the end though, and speaking only for myself, no one can "end" suicide and I believe that campaigns aiming to do so are foolish, as they communicate a message of false hope and even more false, unrealistic expectations. This matters because the emotion of shame tells the human brain that we failed to meet an expectation. If the (completely unachievable) expectation of "zero suicide" is communicated to the public, it leads inherently to shame rippling across every living person who "failed" to stop every suicide that still occurs. That's unhelpful and unhealthy.
One of the five ethical precepts in counseling is that of autonomy; the acknowledgement that people are in charge of their own decisions. All we can do is influence and persuade, we cannot control. So while I find suicide distasteful for all kinds of reasons, I must respect the individual's autonomy and I will not carry the burden of shame if he or she chooses to end his or her own life. I will be profoundly sad, but I cannot be responsible.
(the obvious disclaimer here is if a person is immediately present with me and actively ideating, I am compelled by law to intervene to a higher level of care)
Post-Declaration of Independence it's a American fundamental legal question, as that was a legal document* (subsequently disregarded by ever-increasing totalitarianism):
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness... whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it"
The People have the right to alter or abolish that government which has become destructive of these principled ends (not anarchic by definition, from Oxford Languages: "with no controlling rules or principles to give order.")
The right to life includes the right to die, the final part of life. And for those who believe in reincarnation, their religious/spiritual freedom to seek a new life would be violated.
The right to liberty includes the right to choose the time & manner of death.
The right to pursuit of happiness includes the right to determine that the happiest thing would be to no longer live, rather than take drugs of any kind, nor converse with any other person or people, voluntarily or by force.
There is no DofI-compliant positive right for an individual to have their fundamental negative rights against government (or actors compelled by the government) overridden by a third party's pursuit of happiness and/or profession.
Law enforcement officers need to STOP intervening when the most predictable outcome is turning what would be a suicide, into a homicide & mental scarring for life.
*From Josh Blackman's speech The Declaration and the Constitution - St. Thomas Federalist Society Chapter (10/29/25):
"The Declaration of Independence was a legal document. It was drafted by a bunch of lawyers, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and others. And at its heart, it was stating a legal principle. The colonies would no longer be under the rule of the king. It was basically a breach. Right? Here are the terms of civil society. You must protect us. You must give us representation. must secure rights. And because you've breached those duties, we're exiting. And you speak, what's the remedy for a breach? Well, that's called war. Now, we call it the Revolutionary War. Our friends in England call it the Civil War. They thought it was just an uprising, a rebellion among the colonists. But the colonists knew well that our goal was something different. It was to form a new nation. one conceived in liberty, one might say again."
In New Mexico, the usual gun control organizations (Everytown, New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence, Brady, et al) argued for ERPO laws in part to prevent suicide, but were mum about what the state should do to help people before they got to that precipice in their lives.
Meanwhile, New Mexico, in part due to our malpractice laws, lack of joining interstate medical compacts, and low reimbursement rates, is desperately short of all behavioral health workers and is projected to get worse ( https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/politics-check-how-bad-is-new-mexicos-shortage-of-medical-professionals/article_4c53c9ca-2582-4d3c-820d-22de2f3c48bd.html ). So it really was just "the gun" that the state went after, and indeed with a vengeance. New Mexico's ERPO law has the least due process of the bunch for anyone being served an ERPO warrant--no right to counsel, a myriad of people can attest you are a public hazard, and the law has the lowest, "preponderance of evidence" legal standard. It is no surprise it is seen as hostile by gun owners, who, if worried about being served an ERPO, whether for the concern of violence to self or to others, may report that we "lost our guns in a boating accident".
I recently had a bit of a health crisis that made me worry about my future quality of life. Fortunately for me, a surgeon seems to have more or less put me on at least an 80% road to recovery. Briefly, I worried about whether I should see a psychiatrist or psychologist to deal with life with a disability (those who know me know I am always on a bicycle, motorcycle, or hiking with Annie the Insane Chow Mix), and whether the shrink would ask me about the Family Arsenal. Well, I figured if I couldn't ride, I could always spend more time at the range. Thank God that is no longer a concern. Now just a lot of physical therapy.
And the dominant narrative both in academic and legal circles is we gun owners are somehow pathological? Maybe some out there are driving us that way!
Jake, I appreciate what you're saying and the transparent acknowledgement of the limitations of survey data (especially self-report survey data). This is an apropos example of how the corporate gun ban lobby (a more accurate characterization of the modern gun control movement) skews good research—especially on a critically important topic like suicide prevention.
The emotional health aspect of human violence (causes, precursors, effective intervention strategies) is a topic no one wants to address. Its foundational to successful prevention of homicide and suicide. Yet, we continue to believe that downstream strategies (gun bans, confiscation, even access control) will effectively solve the problem.
No guns = no violence.
Dangerous delusional thinking.
One of the most horrific crimes in recent times was watching a young woman getting her throat slit with a knife. Did it lead to the usual anti-violence (anti-2A) groups calling for knife bans? Europe is currently experiencing a surge of violent behavior using edged tools.
Those who want to commit violence will find a tool to do it with; gun, knife, motor vehicle, etc.
Addressing the upstream emotional health issue is expensive, labor intensive and complex; the very reason we don't do it. We must if we want to survive.
I sometimes converse with Jenny and Emmy (and we exchange email and follow each other on X) so I am not surprised they would be working on ecumenical discussions. I really am curious as to the others. In confidence, of course.
I appreciate the good intentions here, but the conversation is adrift if it doesn't acknowledge an important truth: Michael Bloomberg has pumped untold millions of dollars into the academic sphere, which has tilted much of the "research" there towards supporting its preordained corporate conclusions (the master gun control narrative that would be achieved through a combination of thick bureaucracy and broad prohibitions), instead of approaching the research with wide-open eyes and a willingness to follow the data. Without this bias being clearly put on the table and acknowledged, I have a hard time giving credence to the opinions of those on the take.
That's why I carefully pick and choose what bits of academia I bring into my world—and, as I've said before, why I was happy to invite you in, David.
I can speak a bit to what Walk the Talk America is trying to do regarding the stigma that keeps gun owners out of care. We hypothesize that the (increasing) firearm suicide rate is due in part to firearms owners, which includes police, corrections, and military, avoiding counseling because of the presence of ERPO laws and other policies. To your point, the funders of research to date have only funded questions about policy interventions with the a priori presumption that restriction is beneficial, always. They have yet to ask whether these policies and laws are deleterious to care access, so that is part of what we're trying to change in the research culture. In other words, we would like the scientists to ask different questions. But we have to find someone (not Bloomberg) to fund the studies.
We did our own surveys, and the numbers are robust, but we have limitations because they are not of the best fidelity due to their own nature. The most recent one has been analyzed by a data person and the analysis will be posted when the full report is published.
https://walkthetalkamerica.org/survey/
Yes, this, 10000000000000%.
One of the difficult Catch-22s in this space is that it’s “the gun” (whether gun rights or gun violence) that creates the opening for the conversation (or argument—depending on how that goes), but in my experience, focusing exclusively on “the gun” (again, whether its gun rights or gun violence) can be a way to avoid an even more difficult conversation….all the while patting ourselves on the back that we had “hard conversations” about guns in society. In this specific context of suicide, I really detest that for at least some in this space, the interest in addressing gun suicide seems to stop as soon as the gun is removed. Does that address the underlying mental health condition? The fact that tens of thousands of people in the US (not to even mention global suicide rates) feel their lives are not worth living? That they are disposable? That it doesn’t matter if they exit the planet? Well, to me, that’s the really hard conversation that very few want to directly engage, and while I do think there are definitely cases where removing firearms/safe storage can prevent a suicide and that is absolutely PART of the solution, there’s also no world in which simply removing firearms, without quality mental health treatment or other kind of social support or deep-rooted strategies of prevention, is going to address the pain and suffering that people are trying to end by turning guns on themselves. As you rightly note, the current framework not only doesn’t address that—it reinforces the stigma, shame and silence surrounding suicidal ideation that further isolates people.
THANK YOU.
As a guy who works in suicide prevention, I'm of the opinion that we should be working ourselves out of a job by trying to get upstream from the moment of crisis, and to be teaching people how to stay healthy, rather than merely be not-despondent. Yet that's what much of suicide prevention does, and the grift continues.
One way to combat this is to get people in for real, actual depth work so they can figure out *why* they became suicidal in the first place...but we can't do that if active policy barriers keep people out of the clinical office.
Amen to that, and that's one reason I think ERPO/Red Flag laws are a double edged sword as far as suicide prevention. Do they result in people being fearful of seeking out help for suicidal ideation or depression out of fear of wearing that scarlet letter?
Secondly I think the gun control organizations often push for ERPO laws not because they really care so much about suicide prevention as they do gun control, because it is just one more tool in the toolbox to disarm people, or as Jenny says, "focusing exclusively on “the gun”. There are some organizations that work on suicide prevention for gun owners while respecting people's rights, but these are small organizations, not the major gun control or gun rights groups.
Guns are admittedly at the crux of suicide prevention at the point of the act because firearms are pretty much a guarantee to the Hereafter if used for suicide. Plus, suicides can be momentary impulses rather than someone carefully considering quality of life. So with a gun, the impulse means there are not second thoughts. How to work with gun owners for their own good in advance of the crisis rather than using suicide as a bludgeon for more gun control is the question.
Fortunately, New Mexico has a right to die law and in fact, a friend of ours has a partner who has, with diminished quality of life, made that decision and has the drugs to do it, legally. Just a question of when. But another couple we know as good friends had a son who came back from active combat duty in Iraq/Afghanistan, was doing fine for a while, and then just turned out the lights. He didn't have the help he needed.
Is it possible to even sufficiently address suicide, the ultimate human right to self-determination (which is unenumerated, and in turn, denied & disparaged in spite of 9A) with firearms, in the minds of those who conspire in equal measure against the human right to effective self-defense with firearms?
P.S. This was my first Substack comment, so please forgive the threading placement.
That's a moral question, and one worth discussing for sure, but it also gets into whether or not *any* laws inhibiting human choice should be enforced, but that's too anarchic for me or for this medium. So for now the fundamental presumption in this country is that lives are worth saving (don't get me started on Canada and some of the Scandinavian countries) and we will make every effort to communicate that message. This is reflected in mandated reporter laws and such.
In the end though, and speaking only for myself, no one can "end" suicide and I believe that campaigns aiming to do so are foolish, as they communicate a message of false hope and even more false, unrealistic expectations. This matters because the emotion of shame tells the human brain that we failed to meet an expectation. If the (completely unachievable) expectation of "zero suicide" is communicated to the public, it leads inherently to shame rippling across every living person who "failed" to stop every suicide that still occurs. That's unhelpful and unhealthy.
One of the five ethical precepts in counseling is that of autonomy; the acknowledgement that people are in charge of their own decisions. All we can do is influence and persuade, we cannot control. So while I find suicide distasteful for all kinds of reasons, I must respect the individual's autonomy and I will not carry the burden of shame if he or she chooses to end his or her own life. I will be profoundly sad, but I cannot be responsible.
(the obvious disclaimer here is if a person is immediately present with me and actively ideating, I am compelled by law to intervene to a higher level of care)
Post-Declaration of Independence it's a American fundamental legal question, as that was a legal document* (subsequently disregarded by ever-increasing totalitarianism):
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness... whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it"
The People have the right to alter or abolish that government which has become destructive of these principled ends (not anarchic by definition, from Oxford Languages: "with no controlling rules or principles to give order.")
The right to life includes the right to die, the final part of life. And for those who believe in reincarnation, their religious/spiritual freedom to seek a new life would be violated.
The right to liberty includes the right to choose the time & manner of death.
The right to pursuit of happiness includes the right to determine that the happiest thing would be to no longer live, rather than take drugs of any kind, nor converse with any other person or people, voluntarily or by force.
There is no DofI-compliant positive right for an individual to have their fundamental negative rights against government (or actors compelled by the government) overridden by a third party's pursuit of happiness and/or profession.
Law enforcement officers need to STOP intervening when the most predictable outcome is turning what would be a suicide, into a homicide & mental scarring for life.
*From Josh Blackman's speech The Declaration and the Constitution - St. Thomas Federalist Society Chapter (10/29/25):
"The Declaration of Independence was a legal document. It was drafted by a bunch of lawyers, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and others. And at its heart, it was stating a legal principle. The colonies would no longer be under the rule of the king. It was basically a breach. Right? Here are the terms of civil society. You must protect us. You must give us representation. must secure rights. And because you've breached those duties, we're exiting. And you speak, what's the remedy for a breach? Well, that's called war. Now, we call it the Revolutionary War. Our friends in England call it the Civil War. They thought it was just an uprising, a rebellion among the colonists. But the colonists knew well that our goal was something different. It was to form a new nation. one conceived in liberty, one might say again."
Hear, hear!
In New Mexico, the usual gun control organizations (Everytown, New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence, Brady, et al) argued for ERPO laws in part to prevent suicide, but were mum about what the state should do to help people before they got to that precipice in their lives.
Meanwhile, New Mexico, in part due to our malpractice laws, lack of joining interstate medical compacts, and low reimbursement rates, is desperately short of all behavioral health workers and is projected to get worse ( https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/politics-check-how-bad-is-new-mexicos-shortage-of-medical-professionals/article_4c53c9ca-2582-4d3c-820d-22de2f3c48bd.html ). So it really was just "the gun" that the state went after, and indeed with a vengeance. New Mexico's ERPO law has the least due process of the bunch for anyone being served an ERPO warrant--no right to counsel, a myriad of people can attest you are a public hazard, and the law has the lowest, "preponderance of evidence" legal standard. It is no surprise it is seen as hostile by gun owners, who, if worried about being served an ERPO, whether for the concern of violence to self or to others, may report that we "lost our guns in a boating accident".
I recently had a bit of a health crisis that made me worry about my future quality of life. Fortunately for me, a surgeon seems to have more or less put me on at least an 80% road to recovery. Briefly, I worried about whether I should see a psychiatrist or psychologist to deal with life with a disability (those who know me know I am always on a bicycle, motorcycle, or hiking with Annie the Insane Chow Mix), and whether the shrink would ask me about the Family Arsenal. Well, I figured if I couldn't ride, I could always spend more time at the range. Thank God that is no longer a concern. Now just a lot of physical therapy.
And the dominant narrative both in academic and legal circles is we gun owners are somehow pathological? Maybe some out there are driving us that way!
Jake, I appreciate what you're saying and the transparent acknowledgement of the limitations of survey data (especially self-report survey data). This is an apropos example of how the corporate gun ban lobby (a more accurate characterization of the modern gun control movement) skews good research—especially on a critically important topic like suicide prevention.
The emotional health aspect of human violence (causes, precursors, effective intervention strategies) is a topic no one wants to address. Its foundational to successful prevention of homicide and suicide. Yet, we continue to believe that downstream strategies (gun bans, confiscation, even access control) will effectively solve the problem.
No guns = no violence.
Dangerous delusional thinking.
One of the most horrific crimes in recent times was watching a young woman getting her throat slit with a knife. Did it lead to the usual anti-violence (anti-2A) groups calling for knife bans? Europe is currently experiencing a surge of violent behavior using edged tools.
Those who want to commit violence will find a tool to do it with; gun, knife, motor vehicle, etc.
Addressing the upstream emotional health issue is expensive, labor intensive and complex; the very reason we don't do it. We must if we want to survive.
I didn't know you were there, that's awesome!