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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (April 8, 2016)
2C THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2016 In West, region of guns and suicide, outreach to curb deaths Guns are integral part of daily life By DAVID CRARY Associated Press M ONTROSE, Colo. — Keith Carey is a gunsmith in Montrose, a town with a frontier Àavor set amid the rocky mesas of western Colorado. He’s a staunch, though soft-spoken, defender of the right to bear arms. <et now he’s also a willing recruit in a Àedg- ling effort to see if the gun community itself — sellers and owners of ¿rearms, operators of shooting ranges — can help Colorado and a swath of other Western states reduce their high- est-in-the-nation suicide rates. “Suicide is a tragedy no matter how it’s done,” said Carey, whose adult daughter killed herself with a mix of alcohol and antidepres- sants a few years ago on the East Coast. How- ever, he sees the logic in trying gun-speci¿c prevention strategies in towns like Montrose, where guns are an integral part of daily life. “It’s very expedient for people to commit suicide by a ¿rearm, without too much fore- thought,” Carey said. “Unfortunately, it’s gen- erally effective.” So at the urging of a local police commander, Carey agreed last year to participate in the Gun Shop Project, a state-funded pilot program in which gun sellers and range operators in ¿ve western Colorado counties were invited to help raise awareness about suicide. It’s a tentative but promising bid to open up a conversation on a topic that’s been virtually taboo in these West- ern states: the intersection of guns and suicide. The counter in Carey’s tiny shop — where he repairs horns and woodwinds as well as guns — now displays wallet-sized cards with infor- mation about a suicide hotline. A poster by the door offers advice about ways to keep guns out of the hands of friends or relatives at risk of kill- ing themselves. “Consider offering to hold on to their guns or to help store their guns temporarily,” the poster says. “You may save a life.” Carey says some of his customers take mate- rials home, or ask a few questions. But the con- versations tend to be brief. “Suicide is one of those morose subjects that a lot of us don’t want to talk about,” he said. “But it’s all too common. I believe any method of suicide prevention is worth a good hard try.” David Crary/AP Photo Josh O’Neal, general manager of the Rocky Mountain Gun Club in Grand Junction, Colo., stands in front of a display of firearms at the state-of-the-art shooting range. O’Neal says safety is a high priority at the facility, but he and his staff are apprehensive regarding the possibility that a suicidal person might rent a gun at the site and then kill themselves. Nearly two-thirds of gun deaths Across the U.S., suicides account for nearly two-thirds of all gun deaths — far outnum- bering gun homicides and accidental deaths. In 2014, according to federal data, there were ,99 ¿rearm deaths 21,4 of them were sui- cides. That ¿gure represents about half of all suicides that year but in several western Colo- rado counties, and in some other Rocky Moun- tain states with high gun-ownership rates, more than 0 percent of suicides involve ¿rearms. A map of state suicide rates reveals a strik- ing pattern. Along with Alaska, the states with the highest rates form a contiguous bloc of the interior West — Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico. All have age-adjusted suicide rates at least 50 per- cent higher than the national rate of 12.93 sui- cides per 100,000 people Montana’s rate, 23.80, is the highest in the nation. Between 2000 and 2014, gun suicides increased by more than 51 percent in those states, while rising by less than 30 percent nationwide. Theories abound as to why residents of this Western region kill themselves at such high ? 9-1-WHAT? THE BEST OF THE WORST CALLS TO ASTORIA 911 DISPATCH David Crary/AP Photo David Crary/AP Photo Martha Graf, left, executive director of the Western Colorado Suicide Prevention Founda- tion, and Cindy Haerle, a board member of the foundation, look at one of the suicide-pre- vention posters that are being distributed to gun shops and shooting ranges in and around Grand Junction, Colo. Haerle’s brother, John, killed himself with a pistol shot when he was 29 after prolonged struggles with depression. rates. Commonly cited factors include the iso- lation and economic hard times that are preva- lent in rural areas of these states. A University of Utah psychiatrist, Perry Renshaw, contends that the lower oxygen levels of higher altitudes con- tribute to elevated suicide rates. There’s also widespread belief that a self-re- liant frontier mindset — admirable in many cir- cumstances — deters some Westerners from seeking help when depression sinks in. “We embrace the cowboy mentality,” says Jarrod Hindman, director of Colorado’s Of¿ce of Suicide Prevention. “If you’re suffering, suck it up, pick yourself up by your boot straps. But that doesn’t work very well if you’re suicidal.” Underlying all these explanations is the fact that ¿rearms — the most effective of all the common means of suicide — are more ubiqui- tous in the West than in most other parts of the country. The grave site of Matt Townsend in a ceme- tery in Grand Junction, Colo.; the tombstone was designed to reflect his passion for play- ing pool. Townsend, who fatally shot himself in 1989 at the age of 33, had been a close friend since childhood of Jim Doody, who went on to serve as mayor and city councilor. Catherine Barber, a suicide prevention expert at the Harvard School of Public Health, says numerous studies show that residents of gun-owning homes are at substantially higher risk of suicide than other people — simply because a suicide attempt is more likely to involve a gun and thus prove fatal. According to federal estimates, suicide attempts involving Duck down Thankfully, folks here on the North Coast have their priorities straight. A duck gets hit by a car in Astoria? Call 911. Someone steals a cat in War- renton? Ditto. But when children refuse to get off at their bus stop? Just deal ... Follow reporter Kyle Spurr on his 9-1-What? Twitter watch, where a few of the sometimes head-scratching calls to area dispatch take center stage. The full feed is at www.twitter.com/9_1_WHAT. Now available in the The Daily Astorian and Chinook Observer For more information call 503-325-3211 crbizjou rn a l.com See GUNS, Page 3C
