Preventing Youth Suicides

PREVENTING YOUTH SUICIDES

Missoula’s high schools are handing out free gun locks

ANDY TALLMAN, Education Reporter for the Missoulian

Missoula County Public Schools is giving away free gun locks as part of the Safe Storage Campaign.

BEN ALLAN SMITH, MISSOULIAN

Missoula’s high schools will be giving out free gun locks this week as part of a partnership with various Montana gun safety organizations.

Through Oct. 11, adults can go to Big Sky High School, Sentinel High School, Seeley-Swan Lake High School, Willard Alternative High School or Hellgate High School to pick up trigger and cable locks for their firearms. They can also fill out a drawing sheet to win one of two biometric gun safes.

Missoula County Public Schools Superintendent Micah Hill said the process has been going well so far, and parents have been able to pick up gun locks at front desks in just a few minutes.

According to materials sent out to MCPS parents, this initiative is focused on preventing youth suicides.

For this campaign, the district partnered with Project Tomorrow Montana, Safe Kids Missoula, Be SMART MT, United Way, Safer Communities MT, Montana VA Health Care and the Missoula City County Health Department.

According to the Montana Department of Health and Human Services, Montana has been in the top five states in the country for suicide rates for 30 years. The Montana youth suicide rate is more than triple the national rate, and 71% of youth suicides in the state are completed via firearms, compared with 53% nationally.

Firearm suicide attempts have a 90% fatality rate, compared with 4% for non-firearm methods, according to a 2019 Annals of Internal Medicine study.

Danette Fadness, Montana’s Be SMART lead, explained that firearm suicide is often an impulsive act. She said that, if there are guns in the house, it’s safest to keep guns and ammunition locked in separate storage containers that children can’t access.

Last year, Fadness presented the Be SMART model, which offers guidelines for keeping children from accessing personally owned firearms, to the MCPS school board. Afterward, she was approached by Hill, who had seen a gun lock distribution program be successful in Kalispell schools during his time working there.

The campaign got a $5,000 grant to purchase gun locks, and spent the first half of 2024 working out supply issues. Eventually, they were able to buy from Cabela’s, which offered a discount. The grant paid for about 325 Master Lock trigger locks. Safer Communities Montana also donated about 50 trigger locks from a different brand.

In addition, Montana VA Health Care donated 800 cable locks to the campaign. Fadness said cable locks are safer because they thread through the magazine, preventing the gun from being loaded. However, Fadness said trigger locks, which prevent the gun from firing but still allow it to be loaded, are more attractive to Montana gun owners.

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“We’re hoping that we can get all our gun locks out the door,” Fadness said.

As of Friday, MCPS had given out 95 trigger locks and 68 cable locks.

While the campaign is geared at preventing suicides, Fadness said preventing youth from accessing household firearms would also help prevent school shootings, as most perpetrators of school shootings got their gun at home.

MCPS Assistant Superintendent Vincent Giammona agreed, saying that this distribution campaign ties into the district’s other strategies for preventing gun violence and accidents rather than addressing them after the fact.

“It’s one piece to an overall picture,” Giammona said.

Originally, the campaign, which started on Sept. 23, was going to end on Oct. 4. However, after giving away only about 100 locks during the first week, organizers decided to extend the campaign until Oct. 11.

Hill said he’d be enthusiastic about running similar campaigns in the future. Fadness said she thought they’d be able to do a campaign like this twice a year, but it doesn’t seem feasible cost-wise.

For Fadness, the issue of teen suicide hits close to home.

“I have attended six funerals for those who have completed suicide,” Fadness said.

This included funerals for those as young as 13 and 14.

“If I’m able to get a gun lock on one gun and save the life of one young person, I’m glad to be able to do that,” Fadness said.

Andy Tallman is the education reporter for the Missoulian.