TW suicide, guns.

A thread on how gun owners can prevent suicide in their communities:

Hi, gun owners! Especially gun owners who feel like guns are being scapegoated for our nation's mental health crisis!

Most gun deaths in the US are suicides. Do you and your gun owning circles talk openly about mental health? Do you have a plan for who would hold onto your guns for you if you, or someone in your family, became a suicide risk?

I'm not asking this in an accusatory way. This is your place to shine, gun people. You (hopefully) have permits and storage and knowhow that I, an unarmed hippie, do not. I probably would be a bad pick to hold onto a suicidal person's guns for them. You would be a good pick.

Have you let your friends know that you can store their guns for a while if they don't feel safe having them in the house? And that you won't pry into their business about it? Have a safety buddy. Make a deal.

A gun in the home hugely increases the chance that a person who attempts suicide will die. Some people will go out and get a gun for this purpose, but many others will live or die based on whether they have a lethal weapon within reach at the moment that they fall into crisis.

The firearms community could do incredible prevention work if they made this a big priority. 90% of the time we -- on the left at least -- talk about gun death in terms of a menace posed by gun owners to the rest of us. But it's mostly gun owners who die from guns.