They’re an ever-growing crisis, often underreported and overlooked because they involve a topic – killing oneself – the news media have been reluctant to cover.

Firearm suicides constituted an astounding 58% of all gun slayings in the United States in 2023, the most recent year for the available data, according to a new report from the Center for Gun Violence Solutions and Center for Suicide Prevention. Both centers are based at Johns Hopkins University.

In fact, suicides have accounted for the majority of all firearm deaths every year since 1995. That’s nearly three decades.

You wouldn’t know those facts from the outsized attention gun-related homicides receive. This includes coverage of mass shootings in which suspects mow down complete strangers or – as happened in Virginia – co-workers and fellow university students.

Guns were the weapon used in 46,728 deaths nationwide in 2023. Of that total, gun suicides reached a new annual high of 27,3000. The CDC also noted more than half of all methods of suicides that year involved a gun. Gun suicide rates among Black and Latino people ages 10-19 surged from 2014 to 2023.

The commonwealth’s gun suicide rate per 100,000 people was 8.38, 29th among the states. In 2022, of 1,316 gun deaths in Virginia, 723 were suicides and 556 were homicides.

Meanwhile, gun homicides in 2023 accounted for 17,927 deaths nationwide, falling almost 9% from 2022, the report said. But they still remain at near-record levels.

The COVID-19 pandemic saw a huge spike in gun sales in Virginia and nationwide, putting more guns within easy reach of more Americans. It’s a recipe for danger in too many households. 

“There hasn’t been an increase in suicide attempts. They just have become more fatal because there are more guns in houses,” Dr. Paul Nestadt told me. He’s the medical director of the Center for Suicide Prevention at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and a co-author of the new study.

Guns are also the most common method for “completed” suicides, he said. Even though firearms are used only in 5-6% of suicide attempts, they result in more than half of all suicides, according to a 2019 study cited in the Johns Hopkins report.

Such lethality means when someone thinks of ending his life, and then fires a gun, he probably won’t get a second chance.

Yet, “it’s a myth that if someone survives a suicide attempt, they’ll inevitably try again or simply find another method,” Nestadt said in online comments with the report. “ … The majority of people — about 94% of people who survive a suicide attempt — will continue to survive.”

Officials at Johns Hopkins and the nonprofit organization Brady: United Against Gun Violence, suggest several ways to intervene to prevent gun suicides. They include voluntary out-of-home gun storage for those with a higher risk of harming themselves, and assessment and counseling by health care providers regarding gun ownership.

Brady President Kris Brown told me her group began the “End Family Fire” campaign in 2018 to emphasize safe storage of firearms, including using a biometric safe or storing guns remotely when family members are thinking about ways to kill themselves. Those actions help prevent people from getting guns who are having a mental health crisis or suffering from depression. Firearm accessibility, Brown said, has played a role in increased teen suicides.

The United States, at just 4% of the world’s population, has 35% of the firearm suicides globally, she noted. “It’s horrific,” Brown said. “The thing to understand is that this is entirely preventable.”

Nestadt said Virginia is one of nearly two dozen states that have extreme risk protection orders, also known as “red flag” laws. The measures allow law-enforcement authorities to temporarily seize guns from people deemed dangerous.

He said studies show these laws save lives. A Duke University professor, for example, estimated in 2024that one suicide death “could be prevented for every 17 or 23 issued” extreme risk protection orders. The research was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

Journalists also have a role to play.

For too many years, we shied away from covering suicides for fear of increasing relatives’ pain, seeming too intrusive or inspiring potential copycats. We employed euphemisms and couched phrases instead of saying plainly how folks died.

That made the subject of suicides – no matter the method – taboo. It meant the causes of such self-harm weren’t examined in detail.

One unforgiveable example was the way my then-employer, The Virginian-Pilot, initially reported on the death in 2004 of reporter Dennis O’Brien.

He and I had been colleagues at both the (Newport News) Daily Press and The Pilot. O’Brien, 35, had made a name for himself during his dispatches from the Iraq war while embedded for months with a Marine unit.

The paper didn’t initially report the cause of death, leading to many justifiable questions from readers. As I recall, we violated our own newsroom guidelines because his body was found hanging in a public place – near some railroad tracks. That should’ve forced us to be candid.

It wasn’t until a few years later that The Pilot reported O’Brien had suffered from depression for much of his life.

Nestadt, the Johns Hopkins doctor, recalled talking to a family where the son had killed himself. Another family in that community had lost a child to cancer around the same time. Neighbors responded differently to the two families because of those circumstances.

“It should really be focused on,” he said. “One downside to not reporting on (suicides) is that families often feel so alone.”

My colleagues and I have a responsibility to do better. We should, along with all people concerned about firearm suicides, fight to end this underreported scourge.

It would help save lives.

If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the United States is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org

This story originally appeared at VirginiaMercury.com.