It’s always darkly amusing to me how gun control advocates can pretend their preferred policies are the answer to just about everything. It doesn’t matter what the kind of violence, the exact same policies will make all of those issues go away.

One of those issues, however, is suicide.

Now, suicide is a serious problem and it’s one I feel the gun community needs to take very seriously and address. Part of the reason for that is the obvious fact that suicide takes lives but another part is how suicides are used to justify gun control.

Usually, they just lump them all in “gun deaths” and push those numbers as if all of them are the same thing, but sometimes they specifically talk about suicides, like this article looking at Texas.

The number of Texans who used a gun to take their life last year was the highest since at least 1999, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CDC researchers say multiple factors likely contributed to a similar increase nationally, including the COVID-19 pandemic that might have exacerbated risk factors for suicide like social isolation, relationship stressors and substance use.

In Texas, gun safety and mental health advocates point to another factor: Easy access to guns.

“We’re still lacking critical legislation,” said Bobby Watson, human rights fellow at Texas Impact, an interfaith group that supports laws aimed at reducing gun violence. “This is the fruit of us not doing anything.”

Wow. A left-leaning organization that serves as a mouthpiece for anything Democrats want argues that the issue is a lack of gun control.

Shocking, right?

Let’s move on a bit.

At least 2,644 people in Texas who killed themself last year used a firearm — approximately a rate of 9 per 100,000 Texans, CDC figures show. The total number of such deaths and the rate at which they occur in Texas are much higher than in 1999, when 1,224 people died such deaths at a rate of approximately 6 per 100,000.

Nationally, the rate of people using a gun in their suicide reached a record high last year when there were approximately 27,000 such deaths, according to a CDC report this month.

Overall, the rate across the country increased to 8.1 per 100,000 Americans — the highest level since at least 1968, when the CDC began tracking the statistic. Data for Texas between 1968 and 1999 was not immediately available.

The increase in deaths nationally was greater among American Indian and Alaska Native individuals, which researchers said “might reflect systematic inequities, such as in mental health care access or unemployment.”

Gun safety advocates say the CDC’s report highlighted a need for policies that disarm individuals experiencing a crisis and offered an opportunity to raise awareness about safe gun storage. The National Rifle Association, Texas Gun Rights and the Texas State Rifle Association did not respond to interview requests for this story.

“Gun safety advocates”–and anyone using that euphemism for gun control proponents is displaying a egregious amount of bias–are always going to say anything highlights the need for gun control policies. It’s what they do.

So what kind of policies are we talking about here?

Texas has some of the most lax gun laws in the nation. The state does not require a person to obtain a permit before carrying a weapon in public, nor does it have any “waiting period” laws that create a buffer between the time someone purchases a firearm and when they receive it — a window that could be crucial for a person experiencing a mental health crisis.

“With Texas now permitting permitless carry with no background [check], it can have an adverse effect on those who are contemplating suicide,” said Lyssette Galvan, public policy director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Texas.

The problem with that last argument is that permitless carry doesn’t have anything to do with obtaining a gun, having one in the home, or literally anything but the ability to carry one on your person when you leave the house without a permit.

A background check for a carry permit doesn’t do more than make sure you’re not prohibited from having or carrying a firearm, which wouldn’t raise any flags for people who might later want to take their own life.

There’s literally no evidence to suggest it has a negative impact on suicides.

Then again, look at those policies in that first quoted paragraph a moment and then tell me those are likely to do anything.

It’s funny how things like waiting periods are supposed to reduce both homicides and suicides. The same with regard to red flag laws and mandatory storage laws and other measures trotted out to supposedly reduce whatever evil you care to name.

Meanwhile, the evidence from even the heavily biased anti-gun studies out there are far from conclusive. Even Rand had a hard time finding support for a lot of these policies, and as a leftist think tank, they actually wanted to.

This is especially true in Texas.

Things like waiting periods presupposes that those who want to take their own life are doing it both spontaneously and lack a firearm of their own. This is Texas, though, where a large chunk of the population has guns.

Mandatory storage laws also tend to suppose this is a spontaneous act, which it’s often not.

The truth of the matter is that gun control isn’t the answer to suicides if for no other reason than nearly half of all suicides don’t involve firearms. While guns are used more often, removal of guns from the equation doesn’t equate to lives saved. Someone who is determined to take their own life can and will find a way.

Yet gun control approaches ignore the person. They ignore the pain that person feels, the suffering they’re undergoing, and only focuses on removing one item that they might use to end it all.

Why aren’t they focused on healing the person in question. Why not provide a better way and approach them and try to help them through the pain and suffering?

It’s because they don’t care.

For them, suicides are a pretext for gun control, not something to try and prevent as a whole.

If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or a crisis, please reach out immediately to the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.