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In Natrona County, WyomingThe Platte River runs alongside Casper Mountain, with its thick forests and stunning views, and each year the local coroner compiles data in a package called “Suicide Report.” Its very existence implies that an area of ​​natural beauty and splendor is grappling with an unnatural and relentless epidemic.

On October 1, the coroner, James Whipps, a large, balding man with glasses and a goatee, sat before the Natrona County Board of Commissioners in a bright room. He didn’t have good news. “In the last two months, since I last spoke with you, we have had nine suicides, and that brings us to a total of 24 in the county for the year,” he said. His voice was sober and frank, like that of a small-town sheriff describing an unsolved violent crime. “We still have three months left in the year, and if the last two months are any indication, we will set a worse record than we set in 2021.”

According to Whipps data, 18 of the 24 suicides were carried out with a firearm, a sign of a statewide trend. Last year, 75 percent of suicides in Wyoming involved firearms, and the state had the highest firearm suicide rate in the country. However, in March, Wyoming, under single-party Republican control, enacted a law to expressly ban red flag statutes, which have been adopted in 21 states. Alert laws allow family members and law enforcement officials to go before a judge and argue that a person should be temporarily disarmed because they pose an imminent risk to themselves or others.

Dallas Laird, a brooding, soft-spoken 78-year-old commissioner, addressed the room. “Last week, the son of one of my best friends shot himself and committed suicide,” he said. “A guy I’ve known all my life. And his mother is in Europe and his sister called me and was crying; I could barely understand her.” The boy, named Ryan, called him Uncle Dallas. He continued: “I never know what to say.”

“I haven’t called his mother again yet,” he added. “As I text him, I say, ‘I’ll do it when I know what to say.’ I just don’t know what to say.’”

NOT LONG AGO, red flag laws were widely touted as a bipartisan solution to gun violence. Both donald trump and the National Rifle Association had endorsed them. But then the laws became a centerpiece of the Biden administration’s reform, and there was a backlash from Second Amendment and far-right groups. Since 2020, four Republican-controlled states, including Wyoming, have implemented a ban on such laws. The other three… OklahomaWest Virginia and Tennessee – are also consistently among the states with the highest firearm suicide rates in the country, according to data provided by Cassandra Crifasi, an epidemiologist and associate professor at Johns Hopkins University.

For those opposed to red flags, banning or fighting the statutes has been embraced as a just cause. There are false claims of rampant misuse and alleged violations of due process and the Second Amendment. Nathan Dahm, the state senator who sponsored Oklahoma’s anti-red flag bill, told me he is protecting his constituents from government wrongdoing. The year before Dahm introduced his bill, records show, a colleague of his, who was 53, sat in a recliner in his study and, using one of his 15 pistols, shot himself in the head. chest. Last year, Oklahoma had the sixth-highest gun suicide rate in the country. “Everyone dies,” Dahm said, as he pressed him on the link between guns and suicide. “Such is life”. When it comes to the freedoms he believes he is protecting, he added: “I’m not going to say it’s a valid or acceptable trade-off or anything like that. But they will all die.”

The fight for warning laws is based on political tribalism. Before West Virginia instituted its red flag ban, documents acquired through a public records request show that state delegates received automatically generated emails with the subject line “OPPOSE RED FLAG GUN LAWS.”

“Gun control groups have misled and embarrassed lawmakers into passing these laws,” the emails said, claiming they are on a “mission to enforce” the statute in West Virginia next. One delegate responded: “I also share your concerns about gun laws. I will oppose such attempts and preserve our 2^{North Dakota} amendment rights.”

This year, Vice President Kamala Harris, now a Democratic presidential candidate, announced the formation of a warning resource center, which would be located within the Department of Justice and would help states, municipalities and law enforcement agencies make the most of statutes. . In response, the West Virginia state attorney general’s office led an effort to undermine the initiative. He wrote a letter of protest to Merrick Garland, head of the Justice Department, and circulated it to other Republican attorneys general in several states. Emails obtained through additional public records requests show that a staff member from the West Virginia attorney general’s office implored them to join the protest, writing: “National gun rights organizations have sharply criticized the center since it was announced.

The attorney general of the Iowa attorney general’s office said the state was “pleased” to sign, but requested an edit. He took issue with a sentence in the letter that said, “Little reliable evidence suggests that red flag laws have any real effect on gun violence.”

“Is it possible to replace the phrase ‘gun violence’ with ‘gun crime’?” asked the attorney general. “Guns don’t commit crimes, people do.” The term “gun violence,” he explained, is “hostile.” Ultimately, the reference was simply removed and the letter was signed by 19 states.

Tens of thousands of lives are lost each year to firearm suicide, which is the cause of the majority of firearm deaths in the United States. Research has repeatedly shown that taking one’s own life is often a impulsive act, and that the period of ideation that precedes it is limited in time. Gaining access to a firearm during that period almost always leads to a fatal outcome.

A 2022 study, published in injury prevention, examined the effectiveness of California’s red flag law during the first three years of its implementation, from 2016 to 2018. About 41 percent of the cases it reviewed involved self-harm, and in no case did a person die by gun suicide fire after their weapons were temporarily removed. Another warning study, published this year in the journal JJournal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law.examined nearly 3,000 cases in four states that contained a documented suicide concern. It was estimated that for every 13 orders issued, one death was prevented.

WHEN RYAN WAS A LITTLE LITTLE, HE HAD TAKEN HIS FIRST STEPS WITH LAIRD, THE COUNTY COMMISSIONER OF Natrona County. As Ryan grew up, he played hockey and rode bulls and four-wheelers. It seemed to vibrate with energy, but it also carried a growing sadness, which grew until there was little room for anything else.

Laird imagined Ryan’s mind as a haunted house; New residents were always arriving. Ryan tried to subdue them with alcohol and drugs. His obituary said that life “sometimes found him unbearably painful. “He felt overwhelmed.” When Ryan was arrested, Laird, a lawyer, helped him with his legal problems, just as he had helped Ryan’s father in 1978, when the father accidentally shot and killed a woman with his gun. Ryan used the same gun on himself.

Sitting among the commissioners, Laird felt desperate. He looked ahead and rested his face on his fist. She had worried about Ryan and wondered if he might hurt himself someday. “If you were talking to a young man…” Laird said, before trailing off. She began to cry and her labored breathing was amplified by the microphone. He was still in his seat, but it seemed as if he were lurching forward. “And he was thinking about suicide? What would you say to him?

At this stage in his life, Laird finds that he cries frequently. He wonders if it’s his age, or if there’s just too much to cry about, or maybe it’s a mix of both. Ryan was loved and yet he didn’t seem to believe it. How could that be? What is happening in your community? He thinks most families don’t know what to do when someone is in crisis or can’t afford therapy. Guns are everywhere, woven into the fabric of rural American culture. Moose and elk hunting is a tradition that connects one generation to the next. Children are taught to shoot. Notions about self-protection and what it means to stand sentinel over one’s family have become something of a religious creed, even when real danger tends to lurk within us.

Laird believes that many people feel like they are going nowhere, and that feeling works its way into the soul, infects it, until the day comes when they pick up a firearm. In Wyoming, more than 85 percent of gun deaths are suicides.

As the meeting in Natrona County progressed, Laird said, “Let me see if I can fine-tune this a little better. If you were me and you’d known this guy your whole life… She was crying again, the words stuck in her throat. He forced them out, his voice strained. “What would you say to his mother? What would you really say to him? Because I don’t know what to say! Laird then stood up and left the room.

Three weeks later, he had breakfast at a small restaurant in Casper called Sherrie’s Place, a longtime favorite among locals. The sun was out and the weather was still reasonably warm. Laird saw a state legislator and his wife sitting at a table. Suicide and what could be done about it was still on his mind.

“If a child threatens suicide,” he asked, “why shouldn’t we take away his guns?”

“You know, Dallas,” he said, “I don’t think we can pass a law like that.”

“Well, what should we do?”

The legislator had no response. In the weeks since the commissioners met in the courtroom, there had been three more suicides in Natrona County, two of them involving firearms. The total suicide count was now 27. There were more than two months left in the year, enough time to set a new record.

Dial 988 in the US to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Find other international suicide helplines at Befrienders Worldwide (friends.org).