Throughout the region, prevention efforts are fueled to a large degree by people who\u2019ve lost loved ones to suicide, often involving firearms.<\/p>\n
Cindy Haerle, a teacher and board member of the Grand Junction-based Western Colorado Suicide Prevention Foundation, grew up in \u201ca real gun family\u201d in Salida and had her own gun by the time she was 5. But she gave up shooting after her brother John, a high school football star and later a sniper in Vietnam, killed himself with a pistol in 1980 at age 29 after prolonged struggles with depression.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing is as final as a gunshot,\u201d said Haerle, who was 13 at the time of her brother\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
Jim Doody, a former Grand Junction mayor and city councilor, serves on the foundation\u2019s advisory board. He talks movingly about the suicide of a close friend, Matt Townsend, in 1989 at the age of 33.<\/p>\n
They\u2019d met in 7th grade at a parochial school \u2014 \u201cWe drove the nuns crazy,\u201d said Doody \u2014 and stayed close through high school and thereafter. But adulthood proved challenging for Townsend, who took painkillers after a motorcycle injury. He told Doody at one point, \u201cI think I\u2019ll blow my brains out someday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doody says Townsend called him late one night, drunk but seemingly in good spirits, just a day before killing himself with his brother\u2019s handgun. Even 27 years later, Doody feels some guilt for not picking up clues that his friend was on the brink of suicide.<\/p>\n
Doody has joined in the recent appeals to gun owners to keep their weapons out of the reach of those at risk of suicide.<\/p>\n
\u201cHave we made a difference?\u201d Doody wondered. \u201cWe won\u2019t ever know about a life we might have saved.\u201dAndy Mills, who works for an energy company in the northwest Colorado town of Craig, lost his 15-year-old son, Austin, to suicide in 2010. Mills blames himself for not ensuring that Austin couldn\u2019t find the handgun that was kept in the house, and he now supports the Gun Shop Project\u2019s suicide prevention outreach.<\/p>\n
Firearms remain a part of the family\u2019s life, however; Mills replaced the gun that Austin had used with a different model.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy wife and daughter-in-law, we\u2019ve all talked about it,\u201d he said. \u201cThey understood the need, as our protection and our right as gun owners, to still have a gun at home.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Fruita, a few miles west of Grand Junction, high school teacher and gun-rights supporter Jami Jones talked about two people she knew who fatally shot themselves in recent years \u2013 a mechanic who had seemed devoted to his two young daughters, and a 15-year-old girl who was a classmate of Jones\u2019 own daughter.<\/p>\n
The man used his own gun; the girl used a gun she found hidden in her mother\u2019s bedroom.<\/p>\n
Jones depicted guns as a fact of life for western Colorado \u2013 she has a concealed-weapons permit and joins her husband in hunting and target shooting. But she says gun owners need to think about suicide prevention.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s your plan?\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to keep the children safe and the people who are mentally ill safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a region of ruggedly beautiful peaks and canyons, the high suicide rates puzzle her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t really know why,\u201d she said. \u201cYou look around: We\u2019re in God\u2019s country.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/div>\n
Suicide presents a distinctive challenge for shooting ranges: Occasionally, someone will rent a gun, then use it to commit suicide at the site.<\/p>\n
At the Family Shooting Center at Denver\u2019s Cherry Creek State Park, there have been three such wrenching incidents, including two since Doug Hamilton began managing the range in 2004. One involved a young man upset by post-divorce problems; the other involved identical twin sisters from Australia who shot themselves with rented pistols \u2013 one died, the other survived.<\/p>\n
Hamilton is open to letting his staff get some suicide-prevention training, though he\u2019s unsure it would help. Those who killed themselves at his range exhibited no signs of stress beforehand.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do we identify a bad apple who\u2019s about to go over the edge, and get them the help that they need?\u201d Hamilton asked. \u201cSuicide prevention brochures aren\u2019t something that anyone\u2019s going to pick up who has come out to our range to kill themselves.\u201d In Grand Junction, a Gun Shop Project poster hangs on the bulletin board at the Rocky Mountain Gun Club, a state-of-the-art shooting range with sections for pistols, rifles and archery.<\/p>\n
The general manager, Josh O\u2019Neal, says safety is a high priority; there\u2019s a video system providing live views of all the ranges. Yet he\u2019s not confident of avoiding an onsite suicide attempt.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all feel in the back of our minds it\u2019s a question of when, not if,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not psychologists. A lot of unstable people are good at hiding that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The challenges facing shooting ranges are familiar to Dr. Michael Victoroff, a physician in the Denver area whose leisure-time passion is competitive shooting. He\u2019s a certified firearms instructor and was at the Family Shooting Center in Denver when one of the suicides occurred there.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody wants that,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s bad for your soul, it\u2019s bad for business, it\u2019s bad for the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n
Due in part to that incident, Victoroff has become increasingly engaged in suicide prevention, and serves on a state working group seeking to raise awareness of the issue among primary-care doctors. He also has provided firearms instruction to Jarrod Hindman and other suicide-prevention specialists.<\/p>\n
Differing from some gun enthusiasts, Victoroff asserts emphatically that the presence of a gun in a household is \u201can enabler of suicide.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a myth that people would just choose some other means if they didn\u2019t have a gun,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a particular attractiveness about suicide with a gun\u2026 It\u2019s by far the most effective means.\u201d<\/p>\n
Victoroff belongs to the American Medical Association and the National Rifle Association, and has qualms about both.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe medical community has been content not to know anything about gun culture and gun safety,\u201d said Victoroff, who offers presentations trying to bridge that knowledge gap. As for the NRA, he\u2019d like to see suicide prevention highlighted in its training materials.<\/p>\n
Over the years, firearm suicide has not been a high-profile issue for the NRA; it worries that the topic might be used to advance a gun-control agenda. Though the NRA has no position on Colorado\u2019s Gun Shop Project, it has endorsed a bill in Washington state encouraging gun dealers to participate in suicide prevention efforts, said spokeswoman Jennifer Baker.<\/p>\n
The NRA views suicide as a mental health problem, she said. \u201cThe goal is to prevent it regardless of how people kill themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/div>\n
The intersection of gun culture and mental health is complicated. And it\u2019s personal for Ed Hagins in Montrose. Deputy director of a local mental health center and active with the county\u2019s suicide prevention coalition, he had a cousin who fatally shot himself.<\/p>\n
Beyond that, Hagins says he has suffered from depression for much of his life, including instances as a teenager when he considered suicide. As an enthusiastic gun owner who enjoys target shooting, he\u2019s leery of proposals to deny gun rights to people diagnosed with mental illness.<\/p>\n
\u201cI meet that criteria,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s one of my biggest fears \u2013 legislation that I can\u2019t have a gun.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s personal, too, for Ken Constantine, owner of Elk River Guns in Steamboat Springs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to sell a gun to someone to commit suicide,\u201d he said. \u201cThat happened once in this shop \u2013 it weighs on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
He recalled the sale of a handgun to a woman several years ago: \u201cShe seemed completely normal. No telltale signs.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he learned later from police that the woman, within a week of purchasing the gun, killed herself with it.<\/p>\n
Having been through that experience, Constantine is troubled by the Gun Shop Project\u2019s offer of training for shop employees so they can better identify customers at risk of suicide.<\/p>\n
\u201cI won\u2019t assume the responsibility of a mental health professional,\u201d he said, suggesting instead that therapists in the area should get permission from their at-risk patients to temporarily place their names on a private list of people who shouldn\u2019t acquire guns.<\/p>\n
But that approach has been tried and doesn\u2019t work, said Tom Gangel, director of a mental health center serving the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have asked patients who we think are really in danger, can we give their names to gun shops or they can self-report, but only one or two have done that,\u201d Gangel said. \u201cIn our area, not very many people want to give up the right to be able to go buy guns.\u201d<\/p>\n
The local Gun Shop Project is coordinated by Meghan Francone, who constantly reassures gun owners and sellers that the outreach program poses no threat. She got involved after her 15-year-old brother-in-law, Austin Mills of Craig, fatally shot himself in 2010.<\/p>\n
\u201cKeep your guns. Keep a dozen. I don\u2019t care. But please make sure they are locked and out of the reach of someone who\u2019s in crisis,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m not asking any gun shop owner to be a psychologist. I\u2019m asking them to be their brother\u2019s keeper.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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