Preventing Suicides at Gun Ranges

Delmarva Now

The Target Sports Range in Royal Oak, Michigan, after experiencing 12 suicide attempts in as many years, instituted a policy preventing individuals from obtaining a gun if they are not known by range instructors. A list of those denied access to a firearm is maintained; those individuals will be turned away in the future.

City Commissioner Peggy Goodwin praised the proactive response. “If these were homicides, something would have been done after the first one. Because it’s suicide no one wants to even talk about it. I want to talk about preventing it.”

It isn’t just in Michigan. The Orange County Register, using data from coroners’ reports, documented 64 suicides at public ranges in three California counties in the 12-year period studied. The common denominator is easy, unregulated access to a firearm.

The Daily Times headline was: “Should firing ranges be age-restricted?” What we know about brain development and function tells us clearly the answer is “yes.” The last segment of the brain to be fully developed and integrated into the rest of the brain’s functions is the prefrontal area. This is where we learn to assess the long-term implications of actions, control impulses and make basic value judgments.

In some cases this development is not complete until age 25. In the Arizona case, clearly accidental and not a failure of judgment, brain maturation was probably not at fault. But with range-related suicides of young people, it is.

Should we put deadly weapons into the hands of young people at all? Is the wise solution, as Arie Klapholz suggested, to “teach young persons to properly use and respect guns and rifles?” One common reaction to the suicide of a young person in a gun-owning household is “I don’t understand it — he was trained to use guns safely.”

In the work we do at the Worcester County Youth Suicide Awareness and Prevention Program, we have learned this the hard way.

With rates of youth homicide and gun-related accidental deaths and youth suicide on the rise, it is undeniably in society’s best interests to keep guns out of the hands of young people.