Mental health crises involving firearms
This section of the module contains graphic discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know, Veteran or civilian, is struggling or contemplating suicide, call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988. Veterans can also text 838255 for the VA crisis line.
Experiencing a suicide attempt
Jim recalls how carrying “the burden” of a traumatic experience in the military led to feelings of guilt and shame.
Jim recalls how carrying “the burden” of a traumatic experience in the military led to feelings of guilt and shame.
I had a bad experience when I was in the Army, with losing soldiers. I was responsible for one incident. I didn’t want to, but I pressed the trigger, and several U.S. soldiers were wounded. And I was responsible for some of their deaths. And I carry that burden around with me. It’s in the back of my head all the time—not all the time, but it’s still there. And that’s part of the reason I don’t like weapons anymore, because I used them and had an accident with them on my person. That was when I got…that was after I got out of the military. I was having a bad day. I had the weapon. And I can remember saying to myself almost out loud—because I knew what I was going to do. I was going to shoot myself. I got tired of those nightmares and wake up, you’re sweating, and sometimes you don’t remember. So, I violated the rules of the rest home that I was staying at, at the time, and they asked me to leave and don’t come back. I said, “Whatever you want. I can’t fight you.”
So that’s…I can remember walking down to my car the day of the injury, and I said, do you really think you have enough nerve to pull the trigger? Because I was still doubting myself for other reasons. And sure enough, I could pull the trigger, but it cost me a couple teeth. I had the weapon in my mouth. Took out two teeth, and it exited midway down your neck between your earlobe and your…I would say three, about three or four inches down from the earlobe. And the bullet had exited, and I was injured at the time. Rapidly, they called an ambulance, and I went over to the Veterans hospital. And they took…I thought they took excellent care. But what I didn’t know and didn’t realize was how many people really liked Jim, and I didn’t see it and didn’t notice it until I did a silly, stupid thing in injuring myself. I’ll never do it again. At least that’s what I’m saying. I will never do it again.
It’s hard to reach some people. They…some people don’t even want to talk about it. I was probably one of those people that didn’t want to talk about it, but it doesn’t do it any good. It’s not going to go away. You have to address it and work your way through it, with or without external help.
For William B, unresolved mental health struggles and compounding life stressors became too much.
For William B, unresolved mental health struggles and compounding life stressors became too much.
I went to get service on my own, like the VA. I fought with the VA, fought with the VA so I could get medication to help. Of course, the VA, I had to give certain things and whatever. So, that never ended up happening, never got really anything that would help. And after, about 11 years after I got out, I had too much of a load then. I’ve worked on building a new home and getting some things done. And one day I just decided I’d had enough. It was time for a change. I couldn’t put up with it. I don’t sleep at night. I don’t function right. And then I got a bad back, and ankle, and neck, and shoulders, and everything else. I can’t do what I want to do. And I’m 42 years old. I want to – I want to do things that I just can’t do. It’s impossible. And so, and it was all piling up on me, piling up on me. I talked to the VA about, you know, the help and this and that. And ah, we’ll give you this. We’ll give you that. We’ll give you 1,800 medicines if, you know, we think that that’s what you should be on. You can eat them in the morning with a spoon and a bowl, like cereal. But it’s, if it don’t help, it don’t help.
I’d had some jobs. And like I said, with the mental things and stuff, you begin jobs there, you get like bored and tired. And you start spinning your wheels, whatever, and it’s time to change jobs. So, you change them. So, I just rode it around, did this, did that, whatever. And I got – finally, I got a good company, a big company, oil and gas that hired me making good money - $26 – 7 an hour back in 2012 – 13, somewhere in there. Hired me because I was a disabled Veteran. Perfect. Went to work for them. A couple weeks go by. I had to go take their NDOT class and all that where they get your medical history and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Before the class was over, I was fired.
You know, that stuff weighs on a person. You sit every day and worry. How am I going to make the bills this month? How am I going to do this? Whatever. You know. First, you got to worry about the bills. Then you got to worry about having food, eat, and everything else. And it’s like it gets to you. And like I said, I – one day I just – I had had enough. Can’t sleep at night. So, you’re not rested. You’re not – you’re tired and everything adds up.
So, I just walked down to the house. And I was there. I got a 12-gauge and a deer slide. Yeah, thought I’d just take care of the problem. Walked out back and shot myself in the face. It was – I don’t know – I don’t know how long it was. It could’ve been minutes. Could’ve been hours. I don’t know where I found – but I came back to, and I called for help. And thankfully I called the local fire chief at his home. He come straight in his personal truck when I told him what I’d done. He put me in his personal truck to make the life flight about six miles down the road. And sent me to a civilian hospital.
I’m still here. So, I’ve decided instead of getting to that, I’m going to try to do every – anything I can to help others that are in the same position that I am.
Experiencing a mental health crisis
Steven recalls how a mental health crisis led to his inability to decide how to handle and store his firearms.
Steven recalls how a mental health crisis led to his inability to decide how to handle and store his firearms.
Thinking about that history and then coming back to today and thinking about why I own a firearm is a completely different prospect. I think that’s why I’m here today. I took... I remember getting out of the military and not, I mean, I didn’t even have a single after thought about guns in my life. I mean, after the military I didn’t really have them in my life at all until my best friend was stabbed to death. Well, he was stabbed. I think this was about, I can’t remember. It’s at least five years now. He’s my best friend and was stabbed in front of his home in his foyer. It was all over the news. The place where he was stabbed was literally the spot I was standing just 24 hours prior. It’s a popular neighborhood that a lot of other queer folks go to. The situation was random. I thought to myself, “Wow, what would I have done?” You know? I was like, “I’m more terrified of knives than I am of guns.” I was like, “I’m just going to get a gun.” You know? Then I said to myself, “Well I haven’t used a gun in so long I should probably get some safety training.” I was really glad that I did that. I got trained up online.
I got a Concealed Carry. That sounds really simple but being black and queer in America is a whole loaded topic. That’s something I thought about, because when I first carried, for the first couple months I was carrying, not so legally. Mostly, because I was just terrified. You know? This happened to my friend. There was a lot of racial reckoning happening at the time, a lot of you know racist activity. I just wanted something to make myself feel more comfortable living downtown and living the life that I lived. I got a gun.
More recently, I’ll say being in a more serious relationship and going through a very rough mental health journey of my own while managing weapons was very difficult. I’ve done a lot of mental health work in my professional life and made some strong decisions for myself in regard to what I want out of my life and my mental health journey. Part of that journey, you know, got me into therapy. The therapy was very difficult. So difficult that I found myself not feeling capable of being responsible with my weapons.
Subsequently we separated. Not just over the guns, but in this particular situation I volunteered my weapons, found myself in a mental health facility, and then found myself in a situation where the people I trusted were not communicating with me about how to safely transport my weapons or where they were going. Just more specifically, I felt as though my agency were taken away. My agency to not just manage my weapons. You know, I’m in a state where I can’t manage them.
One of the groups I’m affiliated with talks about how to deal with veterans who own weapons who might be having a challenge. One of the things that came up was like always including them in the dialogue. There’s always the possibility that you have to make a decision for someone if they’re not able to make a wise decision. I’d like to say in my case I was able to. I was medicated and having a challenge but complying with my own safety practices and my own systems that I had in place.
Also, feeling as though in the midst of all the dangerous things in the world, that I had people in my life that don’t know how to safely interact with my relationship with weapons, how to interact with me in negotiating those weapons, and how to interact with me having a mental health challenge. That’s essentially been the past couple months of my life with this particular topic. It feels really good to talk about it today because I’m in a new place. I don’t have my weapons on me. I haven’t had physical access to them since that event happened, which has been a couple months now. I do have access. I can just go get them if I want, but I made the choice to not have them for some time because it did essentially feel like an injury. With everything I was going through mentally, I can’t imagine having to manage guns right now. Even thinking about it now breaks my brain.
Witnessed a suicide
While working at a firing range, Jessica witnessed two separate suicides that led her to “wrestle with grief and guilt.”
While working at a firing range, Jessica witnessed two separate suicides that led her to “wrestle with grief and guilt.”
It turned out there was a firing range right near my house, and I got a job there. And I think, to be honest--and they told me this later--they hired me as a joke because they thought, "this little girl, there’s no way she’s going to last," and they had me cleaning 42 firearms in two hours at the close of every shift. And yeah, that was my job at first; I was not allowed to instruct anybody or anything like that. So, my job was to clean the range, and my job was to clean the firearms, and sell ammo and reloads to customers. So, I did that job from, I think, summer of 2008 to summer of 2009 while I was going to junior college as well, just to see... dip a toe back in education, do I know how to be a real person after everything that I saw over in Iraq.
I mean this wasn’t me directly, but I think we had touched on this slightly that, at the range--we had had two range suicides in the ten months that I was there, and both times the range was full of people, like full. And the most heartbreaking--and this is more like a heart and PTSD injury than anything else, like this didn’t physically injure me, but it has stayed with me for my entire life--was that this guy... just was done with life, and he came in, shot a few bags of ammunition--which is pretty expensive--one bag of ammunition at the time, I think, was 30, $35, so he shot three bags of ammunition before he got up the courage. And there were children on the range, and one of them asked this simple innocent question of, "Did the bullet hit the target, and come back and hit that man?" And the child couldn’t have imagined that someone would turn the firearm on themselves willingly, and so they thought, "Oh, it must have been a safety thing, it must have been the bullet hitting the target and coming back." And, of course, it wasn’t that, and the dad said, "We’ll talk about it when we get home."
But I still think of those people who were on the range that day; and then the next time it happened, it was actually his sister-in-law who got the idea from him and came and killed herself in the same spot. Really, really wild. If I hadn’t seen it all with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it. But that had such a lasting impact; and I think of the other people who were there at the range that day, wondering, “do they still struggle with it, do they still have nightmares about it; do they still...?" It’s one of those things where I didn’t even know the guy and I still wrestle with grief and guilt over that situation--and his sister-in-law, who I did train how to shoot.
And so, coming into that environment, it was distressing, but it was familiar to see that same kind of behavior by the civilian range officers and the military veteran range officers alike; and there were more civilian range officers than military range officers. There were about ten of us and I think three of us were Veterans; I was the only combat Veteran and I don’t know if there was some jealousy there from that, but there was certainly the refrain repeated, "You’ve been to combat, you should be tougher than this." And yes. Yes. So, I was definitely compelled to take it; and the more that I took it, the more respect I earned and the more, like they would go a little easy on me for a while, and then there would be something else.
And then the first of the two ranged suicides happened, and then the hazing elevated again because I had the misfortune of giving him his last bag of ammunition, so they said I killed him. It’s unreal. They would lock me on the gun range and turn out all the lights, and they would start making ghost noises from the microphone; just, in retrospect, the most ridiculous stuff, but they would do anything they could to say that it was my fault for that--which I was a 22-year-old girl who had just gotten home from Iraq and was very traumatized.
Doug describes witnessing his friend’s suicide and how, at first, he “was completely convinced it was an accident.”
Doug describes witnessing his friend’s suicide and how, at first, he “was completely convinced it was an accident.”
I joined the Army Reserve in 1988. I was on the delayed entry program, so I joined about a year before I graduated high school. And because I joined the Army Reserve, the unit where I would drill was about 15 miles away from my town. And so, before I even went to boot camp, I spent nine months drilling one weekend a month at the unit and learning a lot of fundamental stuff, so it made Basic easier. I met my friend at that time and we became really quick friends. He was Native American and that’s super common there, and so that’s maybe important later on.
I went off to boot camp the summer after I graduated in 1989, and we were all combat arms, we were 11 Bravo, so infantry; and so, as part of training, you get to do a lot of fun stuff like fire grenade launchers, machine guns, that sort of thing.
And so, the point is me and him both knew our way around firearms well. And so, about a year or two into going to college--I think it’s 1991--he had come by my car while I was in class and left a note to come by the house, it was a Friday night. So, I went over there, and we were drinking beer, but not a lot of beer; like I had had maybe two or three, he had had maybe four or five, watching TV; and his father had also been in the military, he did maybe two or three tours in Vietnam, and so his father owned a lot of firearms as well. He had an M16 that we messed with a little bit; and one of the things you learn to do is always check a weapon when it’s handed to; you always clear it and make sure it’s not loaded. So that was a normal thing when someone would hand you a firearm, you’d go through the motions, right?
And we checked out a couple of different firearms and he had a .32 pistol, a little shallow, short-nosed revolver. He handed it to me, I checked it out, and I handed it back to him. I did not check to see if it was loaded, or I didn’t even think about it. And so, a few minutes passed and I’m in the living room, and we’re getting ready to go out, and he walked into the room and looked at me, and held the pistol to his head, and he smiled, and pulled the trigger. He fell; kind of just slumped fell on the living room floor. There was a little hole in the side of his head, and it looked like his skull would have just been full of blood because blood was shooting out of it like you would maybe puncture a gallon of milk or something, and so just this stream of liquid coming out; and it smelled like burnt hair and skin. He started foaming at the mouth.
I went into another room in the house where his sister was in there watching TV and just kind of ignoring us. Got her, had her cover her eyes, and got her out of the house. The hospital was literally almost across the street maybe half a block away; and so, I just ran to the hospital to get help because back then, it would have taken a little bit to call. And so, I ran into the emergency room, yelled for help and they were there almost immediately. This is in a small college town, about 5,000 population. So, within just a few minutes, there were maybe 20 cop cars in the area; it’s just... it was insane.
I was arrested for murder. And when this happened, the town mayor even came down. They wouldn’t let me touch my hands because, later on, they would do a gun powder test on them to see if I was the one that had fired the pistol. And this is just standard procedure, I think; they weren’t trying to be mean or making a big deal out of me, but they did let me know that that’s the process that we needed to get done. My friend was still alive at this point and already in the hospital, and they were working on him. So, I went to the hospital as well; I was in an adjoining room. A detective that we both knew from the police department was there with me and they did the gunpowder test on my hands, and I didn’t have any powder on my hands. They checked his hands, and he did; just making sure they could show that he fired the pistol.
My friend passed away and I remember the detective telling me and I was just... just numb, like I couldn’t feel anything. And he told me it was all right to cry and I just friggin lost it. I mean just... it was rough. At the time, I was completely convinced it was an accident; he was a little buzzed and he was screwing around, that’s the kind of person he was, everything was a freaking joke and it wouldn’t be out of realm to hold a gun to his head joking.
It’s not necessarily from his death, but I did have PTSD to the extent that when I was driving down the road, I thought someone would pass me and shoot me in the head. I mean it’s really a bizarre thing and I didn’t--my family, everyone in the South, my parents were conservative, you didn’t go get mental help back then, and so it wouldn’t be until years later that I understood all that. I’m sorry, what was the question? Oh, whether he meant to kill himself. So, a psychologist told me at one point that anytime you point a gun to your head, loaded or not, or whatever, it’s a suicidal thing to kind of be doing, right? It would maybe be in a plan or something. So, at this point, I do believe he meant to kill himself.