Memo to Wyo. legislators: Friends don't let friends kill themselves -- or their neighbors -- with guns

BY D. REED ECKHARDT

It’s time to lay to rest another one of the great myths about Wyoming.

One of the state’s favorite mantras is that friends and neighbors take care of each other here in the Cowboy State. 

Well, excuse me while I call bull manure on that.

Wyoming legislators

 are among the biggest purveyors of this myth. Yet they are always too ready to sacrifice their needy neighbors and friends on the altar of conservative dogma.

Whether it’s refusing to pass Medicaid expansion to aid the state’s working poor, or trying to slap work requirements on food stamp recipients, or slashing funding for the state’s schools, lawmakers are always ready to slap their hands away when their fellow Wyomingites reach out in need. In the end, checking off the boxes of right-wing conservatism is more important than acting for their neighbors’ good.

The most recent example of this was a legislative committee’s refusal to add Wyoming to the states that use a federal system to vet those who want to buy guns. 

Had it passed, the proposal would have included the Cowboy State in the National Instant Background Check System. Under federal law, residents can’t own firearms for several reasons – having committed a felony, having been declared criminally insane or having been involuntarily committed to a mental health institution, among others. There is an appeals process for those placed on the list to get their guns back.  

Legislators voted 8-6 to keep the state out of the system. They would rather bow to the belief that it is more important to protect Second Amendment “rights” than it is to step up to keep firearms out of the hands of friends and neighbors who might harm themselves or others.

Consider some facts about Wyoming, guns and suicides, and then please explain why common-sense gun restrictions shouldn’t be in place:

-- Suicide rates in Wyoming are the second-highest in the nation – and they are rising. In 2004, the rate was 17 per 100,000 people. By 2016 that had jumped to 24 per 100,000. 

-- There is one suicide every two days on the Cowboy State. And suicide is the second-leading cause of death here for people ages 15-44.

-- The state is also second highest in the national rate of gun-related suicides. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of all suicides in Wyoming involve the use of firearms.

Making matters worse – for the people of Wyoming – is that scientific studies show a direct relationship between background checks and gun deaths. The Journal of Preventative Medicine reports that such checks are associated with fewer

firearms-related homicides and suicides. More specifically: “Firearm deaths are lower when states have background checks for mental illness … fugitive status … and misdemeanors.”     

Finally, for those who might argue that one method of violent death is simply substituted for another, such as knives for guns, the journal reports: “It does not appear the reduction in firearm deaths are offset by increases in non-firearm violent deaths.”

In other words, the neighborly thing to do in Wyoming would be keep firearms out of the hands of those who are in distress. 

Clearly, adding Wyoming to the list of states that require residents to submit to the national background checks system would not bring gun deaths to an end. But it is equally clear that such deaths would be reduced. So how many Wyoming residents – not to mention their friends and family who also are devastated by a suicide – are lawmakers willing to sacrifice for the Second Amendment? A thousand? 500? 100? 

There is nothing in the Bill of Rights that says the mentally ill or felons have the right to own guns. Indeed, it is just common sense to limit access.

One fear expressed at the recent legislative hearing was that making Wyoming part of the national background check system might lead to the passage of a “red flag law.” These measures let law officers or family members ask a judge to temporarily take firearms from those who may be a danger to themselves or others.

But why not have a red flag law? Why not in a state where gun suicides are out of control? No right is absolute, and that includes the Second Amendment. If it can be proven that a person is in danger of harming him or herself or others, then removing their guns – if only for a short time – is what friends and neighbors do.

There is no way to know how many Wyoming residents will die because of the committee’s action not add this state to the National Instant Background Check System. But the answer is: more than a few.

Lawmakers, no doubt, will say they can live with that, that it is just the price of freedom or some other bit of political nonsense. Until, of course, suicide or violent death by firearms visits their homes or their communities. Then, let the handwringing begin.

Wyoming’s leaders can do better by the people of this great state who put them into office. That they don’t lays bare the hollowness of the myths they swear to live by.

            D. Reed Eckhardt is the former executive editor of the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.