More than half of U.S. gun deaths are suicides. These gun owners want to stop the 'gun violence epidemic'
Editor’s note: This article discusses suicide and suicidal ideation. If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.
Megan Cole was in graduate school for occupational therapy, often working with patients who suffered traumatic brain injuries from suicide attempts, when her aunt died by firearm suicide in 2014.
Her death radically changed the trajectory of Cole’s life. On her first day back at school, the topic in her psychology class was suicide. That’s when Cole began to put the pieces together. Her aunt had a history of depression and suicide attempts, but those weren’t things her family talked openly about.
“No one in my family talked about mental health,” she says. “She had so many risk factors and warning signs of suicide that could have been identified. But we can't go back and know what we didn't know then.”
Cole, whose husband keeps guns securely stored in their home, began volunteering with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention as the Kentucky State Director, where she learned more about the warning signs and prevention measures for suicide. She took on a national staff role in 2022 as the Manager of Chapter Engagement.
In 2024, she joined Whitney Strong, a non-profit organization dedicated to reducing gun violence by promoting responsible gun ownership. As the "Save a Life Director," she develops and delivers educational programming, bleeding control trainings and in-house firearm safety interventions.
“People are always going to own guns. It’s just the way of our country,” she says. “What we do is help prepare gun owners to be safe.”
Dr. Kurt Michael, Senior Clinical Director at The Jed Foundation (JED), says “gun culture is safety culture.”
Michael, who spent most of his career in rural Appalachia, began working in the mental health field after volunteering at a crisis hotline in college. As a gun owner, he calls his work in firearm suicide prevention “a natural progression.”
“To prevent suicide you have to take into account the leading method of death, and that happens to be firearms, at least in the States,” he explains.
In June 2024, former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murphy declared firearm violence a public health crisis, calling to the significant impact of gun violence on the nation’s health and wellbeing in an advisory opinion. However, in January 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now the Health and Human Services Secretary, said he does not believe firearm violence is a public health crisis. In March 2025, a report titled “Firearm Violence in America” was removed from the HHS website.
But based on data, gun violence is the “very definition of a public health crisis," argues Dr. Johanna Thomas, a Moms Demand Action volunteer, Licensed Certified Social Worker and professor at The University of Arkansas.
Firearm suicide accounts for 61% of all gun deaths in America, resulting in an average of 71 deaths per day. Over the past decade, the overall United States firearm suicide rate has increased by 21%; among children and teens, it has increased by 36%, and veterans have a firearm suicide rate 1.5x greater than nonveteran adults.
“Gun violence is an epidemic that routinely overwhelms our healthcare workers and our systems,” Thomas, who also owns guns, says. “We have to treat it as such.”
Firearms are the leading cause of suicide deaths
Most people who attempt suicide do not die – unless they use a gun.
Across all suicide attempts not involving a firearm, only 4% result in death; but for firearm suicide, approximately 90% of attempts are fatal.
Firearms are used in approximately half of suicide attempts for young people ages 15-24, and states with higher rates of gun ownership have higher rates of suicide deaths due to elevated numbers of firearm suicides.
Rural communities, where firearm possession is higher than in urban areas, already struggle with reduced access to mental health care and higher rates of social isolation. In rural Appalachia, many of the families Michael worked with were also hindered by stigma and self-inflicted shame when seeking support, which can contribute to suicide risk.
That risk is increased not only by physical access to firearms, but also “cognitive access to firearms.” Familiarity with a firearm, Michael explains, can increase the likelihood of someone turning to a gun during a suicidal crisis, thereby increasing their risk of a fatal suicide.
Research shows that suicide tends to be a fairly impulsive act during short-term crises.
“For example, people who are suicidal can very much be deeply suicidal in the moment. But in extreme cases, you can change suicidality within five minutes,” Lars Mehlum, a professor of psychiatry and suicidology, previously told Paste BN.
“We want to create time and distance between lethal means and suicidal crisis… because we want to have an opportunity for people to change their mind about a potential suicide attempt,” Michael says.
The vast majority of people who survive a suicide attempt do not go on to die by suicide – 70% have no further attempts.
Gun owners advocate for secure firearm storage
Thomas grew up in a hunting family in Arkansas. She’s never considered getting rid of her firearms.
“I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in what that stands for,” she says.
But after learning more about the risks of having easy access to firearms, she joined Moms Demand Action, a nonpartisan grassroots movement working to reduce gun violence.
“This isn’t about politics. I think we’ve passed that,” she says. “But I do live in a very red state, so I needed ways to work within my community to make sure that kids and families were being safe.”
For her, that starts with the “Be SMART” framework, which was launched in 2015 by Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund to promote responsible gun ownership. When arranging playdates for her children, she discloses that she has firearms in the home and that they are kept locked and unloaded. Before sending her kids to someone else’s home, she asks the parents about their safety measures.
“I have been very surprised by how willing people are to talk about their firearms,” she says. “I've really never run into anybody, even in my rural red state, who is appalled that I've asked about firearms. I think we've made something taboo that really isn't.”
As a result of Moms Demand Action's district-by-district advocacy, more than 11 million students across the country now live in a district that requires schools to educate parents about the critical role of secure firearm storage in keeping students safe.
Thomas has found that the vast majority of firearm owners she speaks to want to be responsible, but not everyone knows what secure storage means.
Nearly 80% of firearms used in youth suicides were household guns owned by parents or other family members. In a 2018 survey published in the American Journal of Public Health, 43% of gun owners selected "concerns about home defense" as a factor that influenced their gun storage practices. The average rates of families who say they store all of their firearms securely, including a defensive firearm, are only between 25-46%, according to Michael. Secure storage includes keeping non-defensive or competition firearms, hunting rifles, or family heirlooms locked in a gun safe, unloaded, and stored separately from ammunition. Defensive or work firearms should be stored in small, lockable devices or safes that provide fast access to authorized users only. Additional layers of secure storage can include a mechanical or biometric trigger lock, which recognizes the fingerprints of authorized users.
"It just takes one gun and one bullet, so we want to message around storing all firearms," Michael says. He stores his defensive firearm in a small gun safe under his bed, and only he knows the code.
Michael speaks with adult gun owners who say they struggle with mental health issues, including suicidal thoughts, but still want to keep a firearm unlocked for self-protection. But "it tends to pose a greater risk to them as humans than it does in the service of home protection or safety," he says. For those who do not want to lock up that firearm, Michael suggests other interventions that can help prevent suicide. For instance, keeping a firearm in a box with photos of loved ones on the outside can add to the barrier effect.
“You'd have to look at those pictures of the most cherished people in your life,” he explains. “That is not the same thing as a locked safe, but (it is) better than under your pillow.
‘I've been in those rooms... and it's devastating'
Cole says in Indiana, where her aunt died, there is a “red flag law,” also known as an Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO), which allows for the temporary removal of firearms from individuals deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. But the issue, she says, is that people need to know how to access these interventions – and conversations around suicide often happen after a tragedy rather than before.
Part of Michael’s work is providing postvention services, which involve supporting a community after a suicide loss.
“I've been in those rooms with communities, entire communities, families, individuals, who have lost loved ones, and it's devastating,” Michael says. “To the extent to which we can reduce that death rate, especially by firearm suicide, I'm all for it, because I'd rather have conversations on the front end than on the back end.”
Thomas also trains other social workers to ask about the presence of firearms in the home, which she says can be a needlessly taboo topic even among medical and mental health providers.
“We're taught how to intervene after gun violence, rarely are we taught how to prevent it, and so that is what I've been doing,” she says. “We should just normalize it like we do any other question.”
By training providers in advance, Michael says they can better approach conversations with gun owners in a “collaborative way,” without entering an “adversarial conversation that gets unnecessarily politicized.”
The solution? Finding common ground
“Gun ownership and gun safety are not in conflict with each other,” Thomas says. “We're not as polarized as people are led to believe.”
Cole adds, “The solution to combating gun violence is finding that common ground. We're not here to take away your firearm. We're here to help you use it in a safer way and make sure that people who shouldn't have access aren't able to access your weapon.” She wants strategies for protecting yourself or people in your life from firearm suicide to be as implicit as preventing accidental gun deaths.
The most effective strategy, Michael says, is to build coalitions within your community and use educational, individual-level interventions. Changing just one person's behavior or attitude is a step toward achieving shared goals: Preventing grief and loss, and promoting safety.
“We forget that we’re all humans in the room,” he adds. “When we sit down and talk to each other, we often find much more commonality than difference.”