Is Suicide by Gun Actually Gun Violence?
Warning: Some may find the subject matter discussed in this post unsettling.
There have been many debates I’ve engaged in where avid pro-gun 2nd Amendment supporters say things to me I’d rather not hear. Whenever those discussions revolve around suicide by gun and a relational association to gun violence, a typical discussion often goes something like this:
Them: Suicide by gun is NOT GUN VIOLENCE (yeah, they almost always all caps me to help drive home their point)!
Me: Why not?
Them: Because the person committing suicide (they all say "committing"....I'm leaving it in here because it comes from those who really don't know the connotation of the word) with a gun doesn’t kill anyone else.
Me: So, let me get this straight….someone putting a gun to their head, and pulling the trigger isn’t ending their life in as violent a manner as someone committing a murder (see the correlation to "committing suicide"? I hope so) of someone else? Got it….
Them:
Me: Would a suicide by gun be included as gun violence if the person taking their own life with a gun had murdered others before taking their own, like, say for instance, a domestic violence murder/suicide…..by gun?
Them:
Me: How about shooters who commit mass murder before ending their own lives with their own guns?
Them: THEY’RE TRYING TO TAKE OUR GUNS!!!!
That’s pretty much the point at which the conversation ends.
So, what’s the back story here?
My first wife, Carla, took her own life by gun…in a pawn shop…a public place of business…with customers present…with at least one store employee present...six months almost to the day following the massacre at Columbine High School. Some folks tried to rationalize her suicide by linking it to the fact our daughter was shot and critically injured during that incident...that our daughter's injuries were what drove Carla to take her own life. They were wrong, but that's where they tried to go with this tragedy. I attribute those rationalizations to a misguided attempt to make some kind of sense out of something that made no sense at all....something that most folks couldn't begin to wrap their own heads around when it came to anything and everything related to the Columbine massacre.
She did this with a weapon she'd asked the clerk to show her. While the clerk turned his back to her to prepare necessary paperwork for her to purchase the gun, she loaded two rounds into the weapon, fired one of those rounds into the ceiling, put the barrel of the weapon to her temple……….and pulled the trigger. She died instantly.
Unbeknownst to me or anyone else, she’d somehow managed to purchase a box of ammunition even with almost 24/7 monitoring of her comings and goings.
She hid the ammo from everyone until the day she took her own life. She knew the caliber of the ammo. She knew which kind of weapon to ask the pawn shop employee to show her.
Here’s what bothers me the most when pro-gun advocates come at me with their claim that suicide by gun can't be included as gun violence, though…what if she’d taken more rounds with her that fateful day, loaded a full magazine, shot customers and/or store clerks, and then put the gun to her temple and pulled the trigger? Would her suicide by gun then have counted as gun violence? Sorry. Rhetorical....
Obviously, we’ll never know the answer to those questions, because she did none of those things with the exception of ending her own life….with a gun.
Where am I going with all of this? Hang in there, folks, because loose ends will hopefully get tied together at some point here.
Carla was diagnosed as having delusional paranoia with psychotic episodes in 1996, three years before the massacre at Columbine High School. Her descent into a very dark abyss did not happen overnight. That descent was very gradual, very pervasive, and very insidious.
She hid her illness very well to everyone except me. I lived her mental and emotional pain with her. I lived her delusional paranoia right beside her. I lived her psychosis with her at least as well as I could wrap my own head around it.
Even our own kids didn’t know the full extent of her illness. They still don't to this very day know the full extent of her illness. They knew something wasn’t right, but Carla made me promise not to tell anyone, including the kids, how ill she really was. I honored those wishes. I did so because I knew the negative stigma associated with pretty much any kind of mental illness was something she was aware of and was very much afraid of. That was a big part of her paranoia.
Has anyone ever heard folks like those avid pro-gun 2nd Amendment supporters mentioned at the outset call the shooters in mass shootings loonies? How about crazies? How about some other pejorative and negative label? Is anyone currently reading this blog post guilty of thinking, or actually doing, the same? Serious question. The reason I ask is because it's not always the pro-gun advocates who apply negative labels to those who suffer horribly from the incurable malady of mental illness. But I digress.
The mantra of pro-gun 2nd Amendment advocates? We end gun violence by treating the mentally ill, that’s how. According to them, guns aren’t the problem, mental illness is.
That…that right there is why so many folks with clinically diagnosed mental illnesses withdraw into themselves and suffer their pain alone….Carla tried to do that but I wouldn’t let her, at least with me.
The negative stigma is the reason why so many choose to deny their own mental illness. Carla certainly did up until the day she took her own life. It’s also why so many choose to self-medicate. Carla did this, too, and it’s why I monitored her medication so carefully after her first attempt at taking her own life.
Surprised? Don’t be. Carla’s suicide by gun was not her first attempt at ending her own life. Her first attempt was to try and overdose on her own medications. She almost succeeded, but vomited before they became fatal to her. She absorbed enough of her medications to render her pretty much unable to function for days afterward though. Even though she hated guns, she came to the realization and acceptance that suicide by gun was simply the most effective and most efficient way to end her life.
There’s much more to Carla’s back story, but for this writing at least, what I’ve provided here is hopefully enough to paint a picture of her pain and suffering the likes of which most folks will never be able to even come close to understanding.
So, from where I sit, taking one’s own life with a gun is the very epitome of an act of gun violence. As far as I’m concerned, that is a simple, pragmatic, straightforward statement of fact. And I do NOT say this as a condemnation of Carla. I say it, rather, as someone who lived her illness with her. That I was finally able to come to grips with and accept that her level of pain was the driving force in her taking her own life and that a gun was the most efficient and effective, but VIOLENT, way for her to do so is on me, not her. End of story.
So:
For any readers who still count themselves in that pro-gun 2nd Amendment group saying suicide by gun can’t be included as gun violence, convince me otherwise. Go ahead. I dare you to try.
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