Gun Rights Increase Suicides [View all]

[mikeb302000]

The Arizona Republic

Pain radiated through the phone when Kristi Stadler called the crisis hotline in the wee hours one May morning.

"I would like to kill myself," she told Luis, the voice at the other end of the line. "I know that life is an option for me, but I know it's been an option for the past 12 years, and it hasn't gotten any better, and when it does, it always gets bad again."

Terry Stadler tears up as he talks about his daughter's 12-year battle with mental illness. She fought it with everything she had, he says. With repeated hospitalizations, with medication and an electrical implant designed to help with her deep depression. With crisis counseling and years of work with psychiatrists. She fought hard, her father says, right up until that day in May 2009 when the Phoenix Police Department handed her a loaded gun. Fifteen hours later, Kristi Lee Stadler was dead.

Knowing that she had a history of mental illness.

Knowing that she had threatened suicide two months earlier.

Instead, police did the requisite "Brady check," verifying that Kristi had never been ordered by a judge into treatment, and proceeded to track her down to let her know she could come get her gun.
Kristi picked up her gun and bullets on May 7, 2009.

She died just after 4 a.m. on May 8.

This sad story is a good illustration of how guns assist suicides. The biased pro-gun folks will say anything to defend and protect their beloved guns, but the obvious fact is gun availability makes suicide attempts more likely to succeed.

One of the things they're worried about is that people with minor psychological problems will also be restricted if we try to do something about this. In successfully striving to prevent that, they are responsible for cases like this.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
Cross posted at Mikeb302000