Roughly 60 percent of all so-called gun deaths are suicides. These are all preventable, and they’re preventable through efforts that have nothing to do with gun control. This is a mental health issue, after all, and so it makes a great deal of sense for all of us to be able to come together and address this problem.
This is Bearing Arms, after all. This is a publication in the 2A space that knows about suicide all too well. Bob Owens was before my time, but I remember his death, and I remember what he was before then.
So, preventing suicide is kind of in our DNA now, if it wasn’t before.
But Everytown and their buddies at The Trace don’t seem to get that. They attacked the NSSF and their partnership with a suicide prevention group, and the NSSF is firing back.
NSSF and AFSP’s collaborative “Brave Conversation” efforts were expanded to include the Department of Veterans Affairs because of the prevalence of the tragedy of suicide among veterans. The program is simple: Reach gun owners where they are and provide them with resources to intervene and places to seek help when it is needed.
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AFSP set an ambitious goal, detailed in their Project 2025 initiative. In 2016, AFSP and NSSF wanted to reduce the annual rate of suicide by 20 percent. Serious problems require bold thinking to solve them. Unfortunately, suicide remains a stubborn problem and the causes and complex variables associated with suicide are substantial.
NSSF knows that just because something is difficult does not mean we will walk away from it. Rather, we have committed to rededicating ourselves to bringing that number down and, ultimately, eliminating it.
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Everytown’s The Trace sees it differently. They view the tragedy of suicide as an opportunity to push an antigun agenda, using half-truths to do it.
The Trace is headed by John Feinblatt, who also heads Everytown for Gun Safety and once served as a senior advisor to antigun billionaire Michael Bloomberg when he was New York City’s mayor. Feinblatt is the principal officer listed on tax filings for The Trace. Everytown, of course, is a gun control organization that wants to see lawful firearm ownership eliminated in America. That group funds candidates for elected office to the tune of tens of millions, with the promise that those elected officials will back every gun control effort put before them.
The Trace labelled the partnership between NSSF and AFSP as an attempt to appear “worthy of goodwill from lawmakers, regulators, and adversaries” and “immense public relations value.” That’s a cheap, intellectually lazy and crass way to describe the necessary work to save lives. NSSF partnered with AFSP because it is the right thing to do. Saving lives isn’t a publicity stunt. It is basic decency to value the life of someone who is struggling. Providing gun owners with lifesaving resources at firearm retailers and gun ranges is meeting gun owners where they are, so those resources are readily available.
Now, let’s keep in mind what Everytown is dealing with right now. They scrubbed their endorsement of Virginia Attorney General candidate Jay Jones from their website, but have otherwise done nothing else to disavow him or his comments about wanting to shoot a political opponent and seeing that opponent’s children murdered in order to make him change on policy.
With this little tidbit, what we’re seeing is that Feinblatt doesn’t actually care a single bit about human life. He just doesn’t like guns and doesn’t want us to have them. He doesn’t care about protecting human life.
The truth is that even if it wasn’t the right thing to do, it would still make sense from a pro-gun perspective, if for no other reason than the fact that around 60 percent of all so-called gun deaths are suicides, and reducing suicides will reduce gun deaths, thus eradicating a large chunk of the numbers group like Everytown wants to cite as grounds for gun control.
It also just happens to be the right thing to do, and we should be able to find some common ground here if nowhere else in the debate.
The fact that this partnership is being attacked by The Trace is evidence that they don’t want the gun rights side doing literally anything to reduce so-called gun deaths other than capitulate to their gun control demands.
NSSF and AFSP both want to see all-cause suicides drop. Not just the gun ones, but every single kind of suicide there is. They’re working to try and make that number zero, which might not be a realistic goal, but that’s what they’re trying to accomplish.
The Trace and their overlords at Everytown are just interested in curtailing our rights. They count on all of those deaths to make that happen, and they take it personally when anyone proposes anything other than gun control in order to make it happen.
Well, they should get used to disappointment, because a lot of us want to see this partnership succeed, and not just for how it will help the gun rights argument. I want to see it succeed because I think it’s a good thing for everyone if it does.
Then again, that’s probably why I’m a better person than most of them are.
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