Letter: Expanding on Firearms and Male Suicide Rates

To the Editor: 

Thank you for publishing Lisa Dominici’s article, “The Heightened Suicide Risk for Young Men,” on June 27, 2025. I echo her sentiment that suicide risk is a community issue and appreciate her suggestions to foster a sense of belonging and support for young men. One sentence in the article especially resonated with me — that men attempting suicide are more likely to use violent means such as guns. It merits expanding upon.  

As a longtime volunteer with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, I am deeply aware of the lethality of firearms in suicide and strongly suggest two additional tactics to those proposed in the article: 

First, a best practice for gun owners to make their homes and communities safer is to store their guns securely. This means storing them unloaded, locked, and separate from ammunition. The statistics bear this out: Securing a gun securely is associated with a 78 percent lower risk of self-inflicted firearm injuries.  

Second, New York State’s Extreme Risk Protection Order (“Red Flag”) law allows certain individuals (including family members, school administrators and law enforcement) to petition the courts to temporarily remove firearm(s) from an individual at risk of harming themselves (or others). Firearm suicide is a significant public health crisis in this country, with almost 26,000 Americans dying every year. Nearly six out of 10 gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides, an average of 71 a day. Removing access to a gun in a time of crisis puts time and distance between the person in crisis and the lethal means to do so. 

Suicide attempts involving a gun are uniquely lethal: 90 percent of suicide attempts involving a gun result in death. Educating the community about these two measures is critical to saving lives.  

–Maggie O’Donovan Bolton  

The writer is the Westchester Community Engagement Lead for Moms Demand Action and in that role serves on the Westchester County Suicide Prevention Coalition.