Safe Storage Targets Military Veterans the Most : Veterans

My state is the verge of enacting a new “Safe Storage” law, the details I won’t bore you with, but it will require gun owners to follow government mandated storage policies for “safety” reasons. Obviously most people in the privacy of their own home won’t follow these recommendations, the majority of gun owners won’t even acknowledge this bill has gone into effect, so it’s ability to reduce theft/suicides/crime is predictably negligible from the start.

Most people do not realize that military veterans, through our culture, are actually the biggest offenders and violators of “safe storage” policies.

Approximately 45% of veterans own firearms (much higher than the roughly 20% of civilians), and 1 in 3 “store at least one firearm loaded with ammunition and unlocked” and 66% store a gun unlocked, and 46% store at least one loaded.

This is according to an article published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2018:

Approximately one in three of the US Veterans who own firearms reported storing at least one of their firearms loaded and unlocked while 22.5 percent stored all of their firearms unloaded and locked. Sixty-six percent of Veteran firearm owners stored at least one firearm unlocked, and 46.7 percent stored at least one loaded.

Storing a firearm loaded and unlocked was more common among Veteran firearm owners who:

This data just doubly proves military veterans are unlikely to conform with this law because they see it as interfering in their self-defense. Obviously this is a very different story if we’re discussing someone who has an at-risk spouse or young kids in the house – but the researcher didn’t dissect those details.

The next logical argument is that military veterans ought to comply safe storage laws simply to prevent suicide, and the American Journal of Preventive Medicine continues:

With Veterans accounting for nearly one in five adult suicides and two of every three Veteran suicides firearm-related, the study has important implications for the VHA. Suicide prevention is a leading clinical priority within the VHA and reducing access to common and highly lethal methods of suicide is considered essential to preventing suicide. Therefore, the VHA is expanding its efforts to promote firearm safety by developing materials to support lethal-means safety counseling by VHA providers and by distributing firearm-locking mechanisms to at-risk patients.

I really don’t know how dense you have to be to think that the VA handing out gun locks to suicidal patients is a worthwhile strategy. That’s shockingly offensive, actually, given that this is a veteran’s primary care provider and ought to have dozens of tools of their disposal including emergency psychiatric holds, long term care, and the ability to authorize whatever is necessary. The VA couldn’t be that rotten of bastards, could they? Indeed, they are, the “take a gun lock so you don’t shoot yourself” program is already in operation.

This whole research piece was a bunch of political horseshit, the author is Joe Simonetti, who in an interview explained that he decided to get into this research first and foremost to advocate for gun control, only studying veterans later in his career after writing anti-gun propaganda for a decade. He’s exploiting veterans and veterans issues for his political gain.

Because Dr. Simonetti is foremost an anti-gun advocate, he overlooked or ignored the actual issue of veteran suicide – he’s myopically studying veteran suicide specifically as to how it relates to firearms, not wholistic veteran suicide as a social issue. For example, we could stereotypically assume that combat veterans are most likely to fetishize guns and practice “unsafe” behaviors, but undeployed non-combat veterans have a higher rate of suicide. It’s not war carnage or PTSD that drives veterans to suicide. If you’re curious about the underlying reasons veterans commit suicide, the State of Oregon published a comprehensive report in 2015, page 39 goes into the details of 1,500 suicides from 2003-2012 in Oregon. It shows that the motivations of suicide for veterans and non-veterans is damn-near identical in terms of percentage. The one tiny exception is that younger veterans are more likely to also have a co-existing physical health problem than a non-veteran, but even then it’s a marginal percentage. For the most part, people really just need mental health services and social safety nets – veterans or not.

IMHO, the biggest struggle for military veterans is finding a new purpose after the military, which explains why the VA sees a consistently high suicide rate within 3 years of separation – that is the critical risk time period. Transition programs and employment programs that help veterans find high quality jobs is going to do more than safe storage or gun locks. Dr. Simonetti’s interviews on this doesn’t acknowledge critical transition phase, he again relates this issue to simply gun access not the overt root causes of suicide. Arguing that because rate of gun ownership is higher among vets, naturally suicide is higher too.

As another note on the topic of suicide, I don’t find any of the research about safe storage and suicide rates to be particularly compelling. People are innovative, and in South Korea (which has a remarkably high suicide rate) common methods of suicide include poisoning from ingesting pesticides and hanging. According to the State of Oregon, females already prefer these two methods over firearms. Vehicles kill more people than firearms each year, they’re at least as equally deadly, and they offer all sorts of means to travel to tall bridges and overpasses on a whim. Even with a safe storage ideally implemented, we’re talking about minutes to unlock a safe and gather ammo – these safe combinations/keys are often shared with members of the family.

It’s also worth understanding that a key method to reduce suicide risk among firearms was actually extinguished by the rabid gun-control lunatics. What better way to reduce suicide than to acknowledge to your friend or family, “Hey, I’ve got a problem, could you hold on to my guns while I get through this?” The ability to loan a gun to friend, even for suicide prevention, was made illegal years ago through “Universal Background Check” legislation (in Oregon, SB941). There’s no lawful way to temporary loan or transfer a gun under Oregon law anymore; with our current system, both parties have to go to a gun store and make a permanent transfer of ownership, and then a second transfer of ownership when the gun is transferred back, paying a $25-$50 fee each time. Even Dr. Simonetti in interview (pg 5) states:

“The most evidence based recommendation I have is temporary off site storage. You’re going through a difficult time – I think it’s important for you to at least consider taking your firearm and putting it elsewhere: store it with one of your co-veterans, put it in storage, take it to the shooting range where oftentimes they’ll have free lockers for people or they’ll hold onto a firearm or keep it with a family member, until you’re feeling better and you’re treatment is showing some effect.“

Sure would be nice if that wasn’t straight up illegal in my state.

One might also consider that safe storage requirements will reduce theft, but there’s no compelling evidence or research in that regard. In practice “gun safes” or “Residential Security Containers” are not actually safes at all, by their specification (literally the standard by UL labs) they can be pried open with common hand tools in minutes. Most safe storage laws simply require a lock that prevents firing of the weapon, but these can be removed faster than a bike lock. Not that any of this matters anyways, as criminals have virtually no problems acquiring guns by bypassing background checks through Straw Purchasing.