STATEMENT ON STRATEGY TO REDUCING SUICIDE BY FIREARMS

We established the goal to reduce the annual suicide rate by 20% by 2025 to drive urgency and action that saves lives. Just as organizations fighting cancer and heart disease set bold targets, setting this goal helped us catalyze action across communities and environments with a high potential for impact to implement evidence-informed actions in the fight against suicide.   

Suicides by firearm comprise more than half (55% in 2022) of all suicide deaths in the U.S. and 85-90% of suicide attempts with a firearm are fatal. Research clearly demonstrates that efforts to reduce access to lethal means save lives. As an organization dedicated to saving lives and bringing hope to those impacted by suicide, we would be remiss not to engage the firearms-owning community through education and awareness.  

Our engagement with firearm owners was deliberately based on proven public health research and followed recommendations from the 2012 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention, which explicitly encouraged partnerships between suicide prevention experts and gun-owning communities to implement suicide prevention education, which, as with any population requires building credibility in order for people to engage, learn and take life saving actions in families and communities.  

AFSP and NSSF never exchanged money. Our partnership was built solely around the shared goal of suicide prevention education. In addition to funds raised specifically for this work, AFSP spent more than $1 million of unrestricted funds on Project 2025, which extended beyond firearms to the correctional and health sectors.  

Our public policy efforts related to firearm suicide were, as always, guided by research and focused on legislative initiatives with the highest evidence-backed potential for reducing suicides, including support for Extreme Risk Protection Orders in 14 states – a stance on which we are opposed to the NSSF.  

NSSF is not the only organization we have partnered with in our effort to reduce suicide by firearms. We have also worked with Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action and other organizations to educate people on secure storage and extreme risk protection orders.  

All of the strategies developed as part of AFSP’s Project 2025 have been woven into AFSP’s ongoing suicide prevention work, which includes steps to address suicide in healthcare and correctional settings and educating the firearm-owning community about suicide prevention, secure storage of firearms, and when to remove a firearm from the home when someone is at risk.  

To learn more about our work, visit AFSP.org/firearms. 

Please fill out this press request form with media inquiries and review AFSP’s Ethical Reporting Tips.  

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