Clark Aposhian used to view public health experts as adversaries. As chair of the Utah Shooting Sports Council and a certified concealed carry instructor, he assumed advocates at places like the Harvard School of Public Health were liberal opponents of gun ownership. The dialogue was predictable.
“All we’d hear from them is, ‘Lock up your guns…'” Aposhian recalls. “And all they heard from us was, ‘Guns are good…'”
The divide seemed unbridgeable. Then came Cathy Barber.
Barber is a suicide prevention expert with the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. She didn’t offer political arguments. She offered a number that stopped Aposhian in his tracks. In Utah, 86 percent of gun deaths are suicides.
Aposhian had spent his life advocating for safety and training. He knew about homicides. He knew about accidents. But he didn’t realize that the vast majority of firearm fatalities in his state—and over two-thirds nationwide—were self-inflicted.
This realization triggered a strategic pivot. For advocates trying to reduce gun deaths, focusing on illegal use or homicides was inefficient. The data pointed elsewhere.
“All the clamoring on both sides over homicides and illegal use of firearms and accidents, the biggest bang for the buck if you want to decrease the number of gun deaths is going to be suicide.”
The Lethality Gap
Nearly 45,000 Americans die by suicide annually. More than half involve firearms. This isn’t because gun owners are inherently more mentally ill. It is because guns are highly lethal tools.
States with high gun ownership per capita—Utah, Montana, Idaho, Colorado—see higher suicide rates. The correlation isn’t about character. It is about physics. A suicide attempt with a gun is fatal 85 to 90 percent of the time.
Compare that to other methods. An overdose of pills succeeds in only 1.5 percent of attempts.
The critical factor is time. The decision to end one’s life can crystallize in minutes. Research shows 24 percent of suicide survivors spent only five minutes between the decision and the attempt. In that brief window, people grab the most accessible means.
If the means is a gun, the outcome is almost always death. If the means is restricted, the outcome changes. Restricting access during an acute crisis saves lives. It buys time.
Ninety percent of people who survive a suicide attempt do not go on to die by suicide. They live. But only if the immediate lethal option is unavailable.
Bridging the Political Divide
Translating this science into action required crossing a cultural chasm. For suicide prevention advocates, talking about “restricting access” triggers immediate defensiveness. Gun store owners and Second Amendment supporters hear “government intrusion.” They hear “outsiders taking our guns away.”
Robert Gebbia, CEO of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), admitted the problem directly.
“We have zero credibility,” Gebbia says. “We don’t know the language.”
AFSP staff couldn’t walk into a firing range and expect to be heard. They lacked the cultural code. To change the narrative on gun suicide prevention, they needed insiders.
The Gun Shop Project
In 2009, Barber helped launch the Gun Shop Project in New Hampshire. It was a two-way street. Public health professionals partnered with firearms dealers. The goal wasn’t to ban guns. It was to educate gun owners on recognizing signs of emotional crisis and temporarily securing weapons.
The model worked. It spread to more than a dozen states.
Building on this, Gebbia and the AFSP partnered with the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF). The NSSF is the trade association for the firearms industry. This alliance provided legitimacy.
“The partnership with the NSSF gives us both access and credibility,” Gebbia says. “All of a sudden, our volunteers in that community are welcomed into that gun shop.”
The campaign has distributed materials to 8,000 retailers. The message is tailored. It focuses on protecting loved ones, not restricting rights.
Jacquelyn Clark runs the Bristlecone Shooting, Training and Retail Center outside Denver. She works with the Colorado chapter of the Gun Shop Project to ensure materials resonate.
“A lot of the mental health messaging tends to come from the left,” Clark says. “Hardcore Second Amendment people are always worried that they’re trying to take their guns away, or recommending that they surrender them and never getting them back.”
By shifting the language from restriction to safety, the campaign avoids the political landmines. It treats gun owners as allies in suicide prevention rather than targets of policy.
The 11th Commandment of Gun Safety
Most people who walk through the door of Jacquelyn Clark’s gun range in Colorado are not there to cause trouble. They want to learn. They want to do the job right. Clark estimates that 99 percent of her customers are responsible owners. They come for training classes. They ask staff questions. They care about safety.
But there is a darker undercurrent. A quiet crisis plays out in these spaces. The industry has responded with what experts call the “11th commandment.”
It is not in the original rulebook. Most gun owners know the ten basics. Keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction. Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire. These are non-negotiable rules of thumb.
The eleventh rule is different. It is about people.
“The ’11th commandment’ is to be alert to signs of suicide risk in friends and family, and help keep guns from them until they’ve recovered,” says Philip Barber at Harvard. “Once you say it, it makes sense to people, especially if you understand that you’re not attacking guns.”
This framing works. It does not feel like an attack on liberty. It feels like an intervention. It fits into the existing moral framework of gun culture.
Reframing the Conversation
Not everyone agrees on how to label this shift. Anthony Aposhian, a gun safety advocate in Utah, draws a hard line.
To him, gun safety is about accidents. It is about teaching adults and children how to handle a weapon without hurting anyone by mistake. It is about proper storage. It is about respect for the tool.
Suicide is different. It is purposeful. It is intentional harm.
“We’re talking about purposefully grabbing a gun to do harm to ourselves,” Aposhian says. “It’s a completely different realm.”
He does not believe framing suicide as a “safety” issue is the most effective path. Instead, he points to drunk driving campaigns.
Think about that model. If your friend has had too much to drink, you take their keys. You do not ask for permission. You do not debate the ethics of sobriety. You simply say, “You are not driving home tonight. I care about you.”
The “Babysitting” Strategy
Apply that same logic to mental health crises.
Imagine a friend going through a painful divorce. Or someone who just lost their job. Or a veteran showing symptoms of PTSD. The impulse is to help. But how do you help without triggering defensiveness?
Aposhian suggests a specific script. You go to their house. You put your arm around them. You tell them you love them. You tell them you are worried.
Then you make a request. You ask if you can “babysit their guns for a few days.”
Note the language. It is not “take their guns away.” It is temporary storage. It is outside the home. It is a pause button, not a permanent removal.
This approach relies on trust. It relies on the relationship. It turns the gun owner into a protector of their loved one, rather than a subject of state restriction.
No New Laws, Just New Conversations
This is not about policy. There are no new laws being proposed through this movement. There are no restrictions on access being lobbied for by these public health advocates.
The goal is awareness. The goal is comfort.
Gun owners need to feel comfortable having hard conversations. They need to recognize the signs. They need to know that intervening is an act of love, not politics.
The numbers are staggering. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention ran models on this specific strategy. The projections are stark but hopeful.
If half of all Americans who buy a gun between now and 2025 receive a pamphlet about suicide prevention, that is a huge number. And if only one in five of them actually read it… it would still save 9,000 lives.
“It will still save 9,000 lives, which ‘would be amazing in itself,’ says AFSP CEO Gebbia.”
That is not a small number. That is a community saved.
Training Staff to Step In
In Colorado, Jacquelyn Clark has seen the desperation up close. There was a rash of suicides on shooting ranges. It happened repeatedly. It broke the
