Report: Over 75 percent of gun-related deaths in our area are suicides

Gun suicides get a fraction of the attention that shots fired incidents and homicides do, but they are the most deadly form of gun violence in our area.

While community concern about gun violence continues, especially after a July 4th shootout on Orangedale Avenue in Charlottesville’s Fifeville neighborhood, which left five bystanders wounded, including a 9-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl, I think its important to recognize a little publicized project from UVA’s Center for Community Partnerships (formerly known as The Equity Center), which offers data-driven research on gun violence in our area.

First published in 2024 as part of UVA’s Gun Violence Solutions Project, the report includes policy briefs that continue to be updated as new data is collected.

“The goal is to create a foundation for informed discussion, shared understanding, and stronger decision-making,” says Samantha Toet, the project’s data manager. So far, Toet says, the information has only been shared at smaller, community events like this virtual discussion in April.

The data overview and policy briefs explore the problem of gun violence from a variety angles, and it’s worth exploring here, but the one angle that immediately stuck out to me was the work published this spring on the problem of gun suicides.

As recently reported, there’s been a sharp rise nationally in gun suicides since the COVID-19 pandemic, which correlates to a sharp rise in gun sales during that time, especially among first-time gun owners.

When we think about the problem of gun violence, it's natural to think about young people recklessly using firearms to settle beefs or scare people, rival gangs settling scores or protecting their turf, or mentally ill or otherwise unstable people with access to guns, but it turns out that gun suicides, which often go unreported by police or the local press, are claiming the most lives.

According to a recent report from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, gun suicides have been on the rise for the third straight year. In 2023, more than half of the 46,728 gun-related deaths in the U.S. — 58 percent — were suicides. The report also found that the suicide rate among Black youth (ages 10–19) has tripled since 2014 and doubled for Hispanic youth ages 10–19 during the same time period.

While the report shows that men are seven times more likely to kill themselves with a gun than women are, and men 70 years and older kill themselves with guns at a higher rate than any age or generation group, it also shows that gun suicides by Black and Hispanic women are on the rise. Gun suicide rates are also higher in rural states. For example, the suicide rate in Wyoming is ten times the rate it is in Massachusetts.

Locally, according to the Center for Community Partnerships’s research, the gun suicide rate here is even higher than it is nationally. In the Blue Ridge Health District, which includes Charlottesville, Albemarle, Nelson, Fluvanna, and Greene County, 76 percent of the 141 gun-related deaths between 2018 and 2022 were suicides, while 22 percent (31) were homicides, 2 were police-officer involved, and 1 was accidental. What’s more, the study bucks another national trend — the gun suicide rate among younger men in their teens and early thirties is just as high as it is among older men (65-84), who are typically at higher risk of gun suicide.

“Given the concerning rise in firearm suicides among younger age groups,” the report says, “ there is a need for public health interventions that address the intersection of mental health, firearm access, and age-specific stressors.”

Gun suicide data tells us a lot about the problem of gun violence. While gun owners are no more susceptible to suicidal thoughts than anyone else, their access to the single most lethal method of suicide (more than half of all suicides are gun suicides) puts them at much greater risk.

In other words, anyone can have dark and troubling thoughts, but someone with a gun nearby can act on them with deadly efficiency.

“There hasn’t been an increase in suicide attempts,” Dr. Paul Nestadt, one of the co-authors of the Johns Hopkins study, told Roger Chesley at the Virginia Mercury recently. “They just have become more fatal because there are more guns in houses.”

Chesley also spoke to Kris Brown, president of Brady United, the gun violence prevention non-profit, who noted that while the U.S. represents just 4 percent of the world’s population, 35 percent of gun suicides globally happen here.

“It’s horrific,” Brown told Chesley. “The thing to understand is that this is entirely preventable.”

Unfortunately, as Chesley pointed out, while police and journalists frequently report on shots fired incidents and homicides, they tend to shy away from reporting on suicides. As a result, it gets less attention as a public health crisis.

“For too many years, we shied away from covering suicides for fear of increasing relatives’ pain, seeming too intrusive or inspiring potential copycats,” writes Chesley. “We employed euphemisms and couched phrases instead of saying plainly how folks died. That made the subject of suicides – no matter the method – taboo. It meant the causes of such self-harm weren’t examined in detail.”

For example, surveys have shown that people planning to buy a gun, who are often motivated by fear and anxiety, are more likely to have had suicidal thoughts than those with no plans to buy a gun. Likewise, surveys have shown that people planning to buy a gun are more likely to have had thoughts of harming others.

As I recently explored, the vast majority of violent crimes are caused by sudden, “emotionally charged disputes,” over things that people typically get upset about — infidelity, financial issues, child custody, not being respected, etc. Under such circumstances, having a gun nearby can make such emotions deadly. Additionally, environments that are more stressful than others, due to poverty and inequity, or that are subject to greater, often militarized surveillance from law enforcement, can increase tensions.

Studies show the rise in the suicide rate from 2019 to 2023, particularly among Black and Hispanic populations, followed a sharp rise in the number of first-time gun owners among those groups that began during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially among women. During that time period, half of all new gun owners were female, while 20 percent were Black and 20 percent were Hispanic. As the Johns Hopkins study noted, the gun suicide rate among Black females increased by 65 percent between 2019 to 2023, and the rate among Hispanic females increased by 25 percent.

Additionally, as Nestadt noted, buying a gun and bringing it into the home puts others at risk. For instance, among the 7.5 million people who became new gun owners between 2019 and 2023, 5.4 million of those people had never lived in a home with guns, meaning an estimated 11 million people, including 5 million children, were being newly exposed to household firearms.

“Unfortunately, guns are much more deadly than other suicide attempt methods,” Nestadt said in a statement about the report. “Strategies that put time and space between guns and those at high risk of suicide are proven to save lives.”

Indeed, strategies that put time and space between guns and anyone motivated to use them, for whatever reason, is a good way to save lives. But how do you do that?

Recognizing that gun control measures — the most logical solution to reducing gun violence — tend to be a losing battle politically in the U.S., many experts and researchers are focusing on intervention strategies.

For example, Brady United started their “End Family Fire” campaign to emphasize safe gun storage, and Dr. Michael Anestis, a nationally recognized expert on gun violence, has likened gun suicide prevention to taking away someone’s car keys when they’ve had too much to drink. He’s also developed a program that teaches people how to intervene when people who are gun owners appear angry, discouraged, or frustrated.

“The goal is not to infringe upon their autonomy as an owner,” Anestis told the New York Times, talking about the importance of time and space between a gun and someone under duress. “It’s to make sure that, in their worst moment, it’s not right there at their fingertips.”

Indeed, it’s the idea behind Virginia’s red flag law, which allows police to temporarily seize someone’s firearms if they’re suspected of being a threat to themselves or others. Unfortunately, it’s used infrequently by law enforcement. As I reported, both the Albemarle County and Charlottesville police departments have only used the law twice since it was passed five years ago.

While police and prosecutors like to emphasize the importance of getting illegal guns off the streets and bringing people to justice after incidents like the one on Orangedale Drive, it might be worth examining the problem like you would gun suicide — which is, after all, the form of gun violence claiming the most lives in our area — by focusing on what we can do before the worst happens.

If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the United States is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org