Common Ground: Reducing Gun Access – Suicide Prevention Resource Center

Cathy Barber, MPA,

Cathy Barber directs the Means Matter Campaign at the Harvard School of Public Health’s Injury Control Research Center. The goal of the Means Matter Campaign is to educate suicide prevention coalitions about the link between firearms and suicide.

Ralph Demicco,

Ralph Demicco is a gun owner and the former owner of Riley’s Sport Shop in New Hampshire. After three suicides occurred in a short period of time with guns purchased from his shop, Demicco helped spearhead the Gun Shop Project in an effort to reduce suicide.

“Let’s not get on the anti-gun or pro-gun bandwagon, let’s get on the anti-suicide bandwagon.” Ralph Demicco

New Hampshire

Limiting access to guns can help save the lives of people who are at risk of suicide. And who better to take on this suicide prevention effort than the gun community, asserts Cathy Barber of Harvard’s Means Matter Campaign. Ralph Demicco, a former gun shop owner agrees, “I’ve experienced an awful lot of incidents where friends, customers, and acquaintances have taken their lives with firearms, so it’s a very striking issue to me.” Barber and Demicco joined together with gun owners and public health professionals to form the Gun Shop Project, forging an unlikely but highly successful partnership with the mission of reducing a suicidal person’s access to guns.