Here & Now

Gun-Related Suicides Are Rising in Wisconsin and the U.S.

Frederica Freyberg:

If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, services are available by calling the state’s 988 crisis hotline. Suicides are the number one cause of death among adolescents and the number one way people die by suicide is firearms. As Marisa Wojcik reports, despite the attention mass shootings and homicides garner, suicide by guns far surpasses those.

Marisa Wojcik:

The latest round of mass shooting headlines in the United States has infused fear into the average person sending their kids to school, attending a concert or even going to get groceries. But while the prevalence of mass shootings has dramatically increased, it still remains only a fraction of the deaths caused by firearms. Overall gun-related deaths in the U.S. hit a record high in 2021, at 48,830 deaths. 42% were homicide. Mass shootings accounted for roughly 1.4% of all gun deaths in 2021. But suicide accounted for more than half of all people who died from a firearm at 54%. In Wisconsin, 678 people die from a gun in an average year. In 2020, 62% of firearm deaths in Wisconsin were suicide. And the rate of suicide by firearm in the most rural Wisconsin counties is two times higher than in the most urban counties.