Sue Lani Madsen: First Amendment protects the Second Amendment

Every gun death is tragic. Finding effective solutions to prevent tragedy and respect the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment requires access to data and the inquisitive journalism protected by the First Amendment.

Good reporting starts with a question of curiosity. Investigative reporter John Diedrich of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel wanted to know why gun deaths in Wisconsin had doubled in the past 20 years.

His multipart series, “Behind the Gun,” wouldn’t have been possible without a nine-monthslong Marquette University fellowship with access to journalism students as research assistants. Diedrich described the process at a session on depolarizing media at the Braver Angels National Convention held last weekend at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

What he found behind the trend in rising gun deaths didn’t match the typical progressive campaign to reduce gun deaths by banning bump stocks and limiting magazine capacity. State level data showed “homicides, accidents and shootings deemed justified put together do not account for even one-third of all gunshot deaths in Wisconsin,” according to the series.

The driving factor is suicide. You don’t need faster trigger speed or a high-capacity magazine to fire one deadly shot.

Good reporting was easier than getting good data. There was limited detail to the data made available at a state level, so his team contacted all 73 Wisconsin counties. The results were another surprise. After taking Milwaukee County and its nearly 600,000 residents out of the equation, the highest rates of gun deaths per capita were not urban but rural, and over 70% were suicide.

The key question is, “How can we have good mental health practices while maintaining rights?” said Diedrich in a follow-up interview. “When solutions come from nongun owners they come with rights restrictions.” Diedrich estimated at least 80% of his team’s more than 250 interviews were with gun owners, with surprisingly complex responses.

“We have to have voluntary first steps, because involuntary steps are a barrier,” Diedrich said. One of the most effective in Wisconsin and other states has been the Gun Shop Project. “It’s a grassroots effort that has been largely unknown to people who are not gun owners.”

The Gun Shop Project provides training and information to gun shop owners and staff on suicide intervention, advising them to trust their intuition and have those tough conversations with an impulsive buyer. It goes further to provide a way for a current gun owner to temporarily create time and distance from his – usually his – firearms while he deals with mental health recovery.

It works like this. A Wisconsin gun owner, accompanied by a trusted friend, takes his firearms to a trusted local gun shop and checks them in for cleaning, no questions asked. No government involvement. To pick them back up, the pair return together after the crisis has passed.

For Spokane suicide awareness activist Phillip Tyler, who threw himself into prevention work after the death of his son, the Wisconsin protocol is attractive. “We’re working with local gun shops to get information out there on suicide awareness but hadn’t had a program like that considered. It lessens the burden on the person who is struggling to also deal with a fear the government is going to be involved.”

Diedrich said the Wisconsin program was started by gun owners and gun shops who took the initiative without state action. “It’s a grassroots effort that has been largely unknown to people who are not gun owners.”

Tyler acknowledged the complexity and angst over government-issued extreme risk protection orders creates barriers to getting help. “Our goal as peer advocates is to create that space between those thoughts, those incidents, then we know we save people. I trust my local gun shop. It’s something I’d do for my neighbors.”

Neighbors need to be part of the solution. Diedrich cited work by Cathy Barber, a senior researcher at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health indicating about a third of gun owners in Utah had used an informal “hold my guns” arrangement with a friend or family member.

Handing over your firearms to a friend or family member for temporary storage is illegal in a 100% background check state like Washington. It’s the kind of unintended consequences that is inevitable when laws are written without input of those governed by them. Washington’s single-party controlled Legislature has focused on passing laws making it more difficult for those local trusted gun shops to stay in business and tinkering with firearms accessories.

It’s why journalists breaking apart the political binary is essential to good governance. Diedrich said he was most surprised by how complex and contradictory the issue is, “at least by the normal lines between gun control and gun rights. It actually points to places to work together.”

Digging in to the Second Amendment debate with fairness has made him a magnet for conservative voices eager to find a hearing from those practicing responsibly under the First Amendment. “Now that I’ve done this story, there’s lots of stories coming out, there’s not a lot of competition in this space.”

Contact Sue Lani Madsen at rulingpen@gmail.com.