Prevent Firearm Suicide is a project of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence (Ed Fund), developed with support from the Hope and Heal Fund, to share firearm suicide interventions, resources, and data with stakeholders who are empowered to make change. It started in 2018, when members of the Ed Fund staff published a paper in the academic journal Injury Prevention entitled “Limiting Access to Lethal Means: Applying the Social Ecological Model for Firearm Suicide Prevention.” The paper outlined our multilevel firearm suicide prevention approach.
Prevent Firearm Suicide, which expands upon the 2018 paper, outlines interventions that reduce access to firearms by individuals when they are at an elevated risk of suicide. These interventions span all four levels (societal, community, relationship, and individual) of the social ecological model (sometimes referred to by its abbreviation, SEM). Taken together with upstream interventions, a multilevel approach for suicide prevention that addresses access to firearms can save lives.
In addition to featuring effective, evidence-based strategies for firearm suicide prevention, Prevent Firearm Suicide shares information on the intersection of firearms and suicide including risk factors and statistics; illustrates state-level firearm suicide data for all 50 states and the District of Columbia; and hosts a robust directory of educational materials, initiatives, research, and other resources about firearm suicide prevention and means safety.
Prevent Firearm Suicide was designed to raise awareness about how temporarily reducing access to firearms during periods of high risk for suicide is life-saving. As shown through our multilevel approach, many effective interventions and informative resources are available to prevent firearm suicide. We hope that this site will help you find resources you can use to prevent firearm suicide, whether that means taking preventative steps to keep yourself or your loved ones safe, or taking action in your relationships, community, or larger society. Together, we can Prevent Firearm Suicide.
Founded in 1978, the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence (Ed Fund) is a nonprofit organization that makes communities safer by translating research into policy to prevent gun violence and engaging impacted communities in the policymaking process. The Ed Fund is the gun violence prevention movement’s premier research intermediary and founder of the Consortium for Risk-Based Firearm Policy (Consortium), a group of researchers and practitioners who collaborate to develop innovative recommendations for policymakers. The Ed Fund’s affiliate organization, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (Coalition), has advocated for stronger gun laws since 1974. Together, they have paved the way for the gun violence prevention movement to address firearm suicides, which make up 3 out of every 5 firearm-related deaths today. Today, the Ed Fund works tirelessly to advance research and support evidence-based firearm suicide prevention programs and policies, partners with suicide prevention and gun violence prevention groups alike, and continues to lead the national dialogue with Prevent Firearm Suicide.
Hope and Heal Fund is proud to support this comprehensive firearm suicide prevention resource website. The Hope and Heal Fund harnesses the collective power of individuals, communities, business leaders, government and philanthropy to ensure homes and communities in California are safe and free from gun death, injury and trauma. Hope and Heal Fund is the only state-based collaborative fund committed to a public health approach to prevent gun violence. For more information about the Hope and Heal Fund, please visit hopeandhealfund.org.
The Joyce Foundation is a nonpartisan private foundation that invests in public policies and strategies to advance racial equity and economic mobility for the next generation in the Great Lakes region. Through our Gun Violence Prevention and Justice Reform Program, we make grants to support research, education, and policy solutions to limit availability of firearms to those at risk of violence. The Joyce Foundation supported the development of the Consortium for Risk-Based Firearm Policy (Consortium), a group of the nation’s leading researchers, practitioners, and advocates in gun violence prevention, public health, law, and mental health that is managed by the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence. With the Joyce Foundation’s continued support, the Consortium developed the Extreme Risk Law and produced recommendations on training for lethal means safety counseling, both of which are discussed on this site.