Today, surrounded by other council members and Moms Demand Action representatives, Evan Glass proposed a bill to require gun shops to distribute suicide prevention information to customers that purchase a gun or ammunition. The Suicide Awareness and Firearm Education (SAFE) Act was co-sponsored by several council members, including co-Council Vice President Andrew Friedson (D-Dist. 1) and councilmembers Gabe Albornoz (D-At-large), Marilyn Balcombe (D-Dist. 2), Will Jawando (D-At-large), Sidney Katz (D-Dist. 3), Dawn Luedtke (D-Dist. 7), Laurie-Anne Sayles (D-At-large) and Kate Stewart (D-Dist. 4).
Gabe Albornoz explained the bill as:
The SAFE Act (Bill 36-23, Sale of Firearms or Ammunition – Suicide Awareness and Firearm Education) would bolster gun violence prevention efforts. The new legislation would require the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services to develop literature about firearm safety, suicide prevention and conflict resolution, which retailers of firearms and ammunition would be required to distribute at the point of sales.
During the press event, Evan proclaimed:
We’ve had enough thoughts and prayers. We need to act.
Admittingly, such action is only a step above Gabe grabbing his orange shirt and leading another walk.
Evan also expressed on social media and during the event that:
Which had users on X.com (twitter) quickly correcting him that it is “death by suicide”, not “suicide committed by”. This important distinction is echoed by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, despite the bias Evan might have to firearms.
The question though is would such a bill be effective in bringing down the suicide rate, one of the many things that have increased dramatically since Evan and some of his co-sponsors worked to handicap MoCo under some of the country’s strictest and longest lasting COVID-19 restrictions?
Welllllllllll. There isn’t exactly any data for this.
The prominent example of comparable work across the country is Means Matter, through the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which runs the Gun Shop Project.
The mission of the Means Matter Campaign is to increase the proportion of suicide prevention groups who promote activities that reduce a suicidal person’s access to lethal means of suicide and who develop active partnerships with gun owner groups to prevent suicide.
In 2009 a project started in New Hampshire to reach out to gun shops on the role they can play in suicide prevention. This included “encouraging gun stores and firing ranges to display and distribute suicide prevention materials tailored to their customers”. Since 2009 the Gun Shop Project has gone nationwide, and is in over 20 different states, including Maryland. Strangely the link on the Gun Shop Project website to the Maryland Licensed Firearms Dealers Association Suicide Prevention Project (MLFDA) does not work!
No where on the Means Matter or the Gun Shop Project are any statistics related to the success of the program published. In fact, nowhere on the site does it reference that any form of assessment on the results or the outcomes has ever been conducted. We have reached out to their media relations department for additional information and will update the article accordingly.
However, one of the participating states, Colorado, does have some additional information. The State of Colorado has over 275 retailers that participate in the program. What is interesting though is that in 2021 they received a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to spend the next 3 years to see if the program is even effective. Sarbrina Arredondo Mattson, the senior research associate says,
If we can really reduce suicides through this program, it’s important to document that, and understand what’s working and what’s not.
So, in short, in 2024 there will be some preliminary results on whether the program even works.
It seems like once again the Council has put forward a bill that while it might appeal to certain activist groups is not founded in any scientific data or even sound public policy analysis. Add to this that neighboring Anne Arundel County enacted a similar law last year that is pending a hearing in the U.S. Court of Appeals, and it is clear that this is not a serious attempt to take meaningful action….it’s just more signaling by the County Council.
