AFSP: AFSP Releases Consensus Statement on Firearms

Members

American Association of Suicidology

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

The Jason Foundation

The Jed Foundation

The Link’s National Resource Center for Suicide Prevention

National Organization for People of Color Against Suicide

Samaritans USA

Suicide Awareness Voices of Education

Suicide Prevention Action Network USA

Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Program

AFSP Joins with Nine Other Leading Suicide Prevention Organizations in Releasing Consensus Statement on Firearms

The National Council for Suicide Prevention (NCSP), a group of 10 national organizations dedicated to working collaboratively with their colleagues in government and the private sector to help advance the goals and objectives of the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention, release the following joint statement:

The National Strategy for Suicide Prevention includes objectives to reduce access to lethal means and methods of self-harm. NCSP members want policymakers, the media, and the public at large to know that our organizations support the objectives that are promulgated to save lives and not to deny basic rights. In support of these objectives, the members of the NCSP support education, awareness and reasonable policy regarding the reduction of access to firearms by individuals determined by a mental health professional to be at risk of harming themselves or others.

Specifically, the NCSP supports:

initiatives that encourage trigger locks and safe storage practices, pursue palm identification and other new safety technologies, and public information campaigns designed to educate and build awareness around firearm safety and storage;
additional public awareness campaigns to ensure that all Americans know the warning signs of suicide, which include looking for ways to kill oneself by seeking access to firearms, pills, or other means and talking or writing about death, dying or suicide. With greater public awareness, early intervention becomes the national norm and not the exception.

The NCSP has concerns that state and national background check databases that include people with mental illness could inadvertently convey that all people with mental illness are violent or dangerous, in which there is no proven evidence and further contributes to the stigma surrounding these illnesses. The NCSP also recognizes that people with mental illness determined by a mental health professional or certified adjudicating authority to be a danger to themselves or others should not have access to firearms and could be placed in such databases. Therefore, the NCSP urges that:

any background check database which includes individuals determined to be a danger to themselves or others as a result of a mental illness not be labeled as a criminal database;
procedures be put in place that allow people with mental illnesses to exit these databases in a timely manner when the threat of harm is withdrawn or upon recovery from a mental illness as certified by a mental health professional or another certified adjudicating authority.

American Association of Suicidology
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
The Jason Foundation
The Jed Foundation
The Link’s National Resource Center for Suicide Prevention
National Organization for People of Color Against Suicide
Samaritans USA
Suicide Awareness Voices of Education
Suicide Prevention Action Network USA
Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Program