A new suicide prevention tool for veterans: gun locks

Kristi Charles, of the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs, has spent years working with colleagues to solve the scourge of military suicide.

It seems like an intractable problem: Each year between 2014 and 2019, more than 100 Minnesota veterans died by suicide. Two years ago, exactly 100 veteran suicides amounted to nearly 14% of suicides in the state — despite veterans only comprising 5% of the state's population.

As part of increasing efforts to prevent suicide and encourage mental health care, state and military leaders recently began promoting methods to help veterans and service members pause before harming themselves with firearms, both with gun locks and remote storage.

"The five seconds it takes to unlock a gun lock could save someone's life — just make them think, even for five seconds," said Charles, veteran suicide prevention coordinator for the department. "I've talked with so many spouses [of veterans who have died by suicide] who tell me, 'If I'd only known how to use a gun lock.'"

The department has distributed more than 20,000 gun locks since last year, and the Minnesota National Guard has given away more than 5,000 gun locks at armories around the state the past two years.

The department will be launching a new program in 2023 where gun-store owners will offer free gun storage to veterans who are struggling and want their firearms stored outside their home.

"Sometimes firearms just need to be out of the house for a bit," said Maj. Gen. Johanna Clyborne, assistant adjutant general in the Minnesota National Guard.

National statistics about veteran suicide are jarring, according to Stop Soldier Suicide, a nonprofit started in 2010 by three Army veterans to address the worst suicide crisis the military has ever seen.

The suicide rate among veterans is 1.5 times the national average. More than 125,000 U.S. military veterans have died by suicide in the past two decades, including 6,146 in 2020.

"We want to get the message out, but here's what we don't want the message to be: 'Veterans are broken, service members are dangerous,'" Clyborne said. "That's the wrong message. The truth of the matter is that we mirror society."

More than 44,000 Americans died by suicide in 2020, the 11th-leading cause of death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But suicide is the second-leading cause of death for people ages 10-14 and 25-34. The national suicide rate was 30% higher in 2020 compared to 2000.

Most veteran suicides involve firearms.

Suicide prevention measures like the gun locks are part of a cultural shift about confronting mental-health stigmas head-on, Clyborne said.

"We as a society aren't comfortable looking another person in the eye and saying, 'Are you planning on killing yourself?'" Clyborne said. "And those are the words we have to use."

Dan Hanson, an Iraq veteran and St. Paul therapist who works with veterans and first responders, sees gun locks as but a small tool in suicide prevention.

"Most people think suicide is a knee-jerk reaction, a bad moment, but statistics say that's not true," said Hanson, whose brother, also a veteran, died by suicide. "Anything you can do to get a person's mind off that spiral of thinking about suicide, it's powerful, it's needed, it's effective. But it's just a starting point."

Minnesotans and others struggling with thoughts of suicide or other mental health crises can receive immediate help from the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.