The silent epidemic of America’s problem with guns
Two thirds of American gun deaths are suicides. How do you solve a problem hardly anyone talks about?
www.bbc.com
In a few states, unlikely coalitions of public health researchers and gun enthusiasts have formed with the shared goal of raising awareness. The first such coalition was born nearly a decade ago when Ralph Demicco, the owner of a large gun shop in the small town of Hooksett, New Hampshire, got a call from a local public health researcher after the local coroner saw that three people had killed themselves in the space of six days shortly after buying a gun from his store. "I was dumbfounded," Demicco told me. "I couldn't believe it."
Demicco watched and re-watched CCTV tapes of the sales. He had believed he was running a socially responsible gun shop, one that even boasted of an unofficial motto, "firearms for the responsible", where staff applied due diligence to every sale and were able to identify vulnerable people or people in a crisis. But when he watched the tapes he saw three normal looking sales. "I saw nothing out of the ordinary," he said, "nothing."
He agreed to join forces with the researcher who'd called him, Dr Elaine Frank, and together they created the Gun Shop Project. With no state backing and barely any money, they produced display posters and cards with safe gun storage advice and contact details for support groups, and posted them to about 70 gun shops in New Hampshire, where more than 85% of gun deaths are suicides.
Between the project and its goal lay years of deep-seated mistrust. Some shop owners said it was just another way to demonise guns. Others said it would be bad for business. But six months after their mailout, Frank and Demicco personally visited every shop on the list, unannounced, and found their booklets and posters displayed in about half.
"We considered that a pretty big success, getting some of the gun store owners to trust the public health people," Demicco said. "I had never seen that before."