Suicide.

It’s an awful subject and one I wish we never had to talk about again. The idea of someone taking their own life is tragic, as we at Bearing Arms know all too well.

However, it seems that the supposed experts and the media themselves seem to think that suicide isn’t a mental health issue, but a gun issue. Why else title a story, “As Isolation and Gun Sales Both Grow, Experts Urge Gun Owners to Plan to Prevent Suicides.” anyway?

Bass said the ongoing pandemic has made that kind of reasoning almost unavoidable.

“There has been months of just talking about human death on a pervasive basis,” Bass said.

And concerns about how access to a gun can enable suicide is on the minds of some who otherwise advocate for their value.

“The risk with a firearm is it’s effective,” said Robin Ball, owner of Sharp Shooting Indoor Range and Gun Shop in Spokane. “That person doesn’t have the opportunity to change their mind and so, while we want an effective tool for what we want the tool for legitimately, that has to be a consideration for people.”

In March, among the run on toilet paper and hand sanitizer there was also a massive increase in gun and ammunition sales in the Spokane area.

“We’ve had a historic increase in firearms sales,” Bass said.

Yet much of the story itself does talk about mental health. It talks about a lot of psychological factors that people are experiencing right now that may play a factor in committing suicide.

So why really focus on the guns? Oh, I get that Ball says it’s effective, and that’s not untrue.

However, it’s also not the only effective way to take your own life, just the most effective. After all, where are the warnings for owners of razor blades? What about rope, cars, people with medications, and a host of other factors one could use to kill themselves?

Frankly, I’m sick of it.

I’m sick and damn tired of the focus on suicides seeming to be targeting of gun owners as if we’re somehow the most likely to take our own lives; as if we’re a group that’s particularly susceptible to depression and suicidal thoughts. We’re not.

Suicide is a mental health issue. It’s time the experts and the media start acting like it for a damn change. Recommendations to hand off your firearms if you’re depressed are fine so long as there are also recommendations for other instruments that can be used to take one’s own life as well. That’s not what we’re seeing.

Instead, we get articles like this that seem to foster the idea that we’re mentally unbalanced, just on the edge of taking our own lives at any time. These are the people who think buying a first gun is a sign that someone might be a danger to themselves or someone else, for crying out loud, so why does anyone take them seriously?

Mostly because so few people even know that part.

Meanwhile, we’ll continue to be “treated” to stories that paint us as the ones most likely to end our own lives while millions of others kill themselves with a wide assortment of other methods.