Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 27, 1992 TAG: 9201300023
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
GUNS IN THE HOME INCREASE ODDS OF TEEN SUICIDES
Contrary to what many parents think, the danger of having guns around the home grows as children grow older - because the risk of suicide increases with age.David Morris, 15, came home from a drinking bout with friends Last of a series two Christmases ago, called his girlfriend and told her no one loved him. He said he was sorry for what he was going to do.
Then he shot himself to death.
Linda Morris found her son slumped over in a recliner, a telephone receiver in one hand and a handgun in the other.
A month before, he had finished a 30-day alcohol-treatment program and moved into a trailer with his father in Bedford County.
Linda Morris had pleaded with her ex-husband: "Don't keep liquor in the home."
"But I never really thought about the guns being there - that never entered my mind, because I knew David was really careful with guns."
She was not alone. Studies show that parents generally believe the risk of having guns in their home lessens as their children get older. The older the child, they figure, the more responsible.
But statistics show the danger from handguns in the home grows as kids grow older - because the risk of suicide increases with age. It's a fact that is often overlooked by the news media, doctors and others with the ability to inform and influence parents.
In 1991, eight of the 14 gunshot deaths of Western Virginians 17 and younger were suicides. These included two 17-year-olds who killed themselves in Pulaski County two weeks apart, one with a handgun and the other with a shotgun.
"As kids get older, you really have to take the most extreme measures" to protect them from guns, says Dr. Daniel Webster, who directs the violence research center at George Washington Hospital in Washington, D.C. "Adolescence is a very volatile period of highs of lows."
Throw a firearm into the mixture, and the chances that a troubled child will commit suicide increase dramatically.
A study published in the Dec. 4 Journal of the American Medical Association found that the odds that potentially suicidal adolescents will kill themselves increase 7,500 percent when there is a gun in the home. Other methods used in suicide tries are less likely to be fatal.
For impulsive youngsters, a suicide attempt is often a plea for help. The presence of a gun may guarantee that such pleas will not be heard.
"Without ready access to guns, many youth suicides might remain suicide attempts," the AMA journal commented. Having a gun around the house "may not make them violent, but it can make their self-directed violence fatal and very final."
Linda Morris places much of the blame for her son's death on alcohol. But she also believes that he'd be alive today if he hadn't had access to a firearm. "If the guns hadn't been there, he would probably have just talked to his girlfriend for a while and went to bed."
It would have been a bad night, a setback in his recovery from his alcohol problem. But he would have been alive.
Morris remembers her son as an average, happy kid. He played on his school baseball team for four years.
His dream was to get a little cabin in the wilderness, hunting and fishing and living the life of a mountain man.
He got his first gun when he was about 11, she said. She didn't like guns, but he was always knowledgeable and responsible with it. He would unload it before he came out of the woods, then clean it and store it.
About a year before his death, his mother said, he started hanging out and drinking with some older boys - men, really, some of them in their 20s. He was 6-foot-2, 160 pounds, so he could pass for much older.
"It's so hard to see your child going down this road and not be able to stop it."
One night, in November 1989, "I called the law because he was just completely out of control." She believed she had no other choice.
David signed himself into a one-month treatment program at Virginia Baptist Hospital in Lynchburg.
He was angry at his mother for calling the sheriff. After getting out, he moved in with his dad at Smith Mountain Lake. For two weeks, he wouldn't talk to his mom on the phone or go see her. Finally, though, he started coming to her house and going out to eat with her.
"That was the best two weeks that we had had for almost a year," she said.
He told her he disagreed with her, but that he understood why she'd done it.
On Dec. 19, he worked on a construction crew with his dad. On the way home, he ducked into a convenience store and bought a black T-shirt and a "Wheels and Deals" magazine.
His father left to visit a friend's house. Then David went out with his friends. His mother believes it was the first time he had drunk alcohol since before he'd gone to the hospital.
When he drank, she said, he got depressed. After a couple hours, his friends dropped him off at his father's trailer. His mother says he told his friends that he was going to kill himself, but they did not believe him.
After he shot himself to death, his girlfriend called his mother. She did not tell her about the gun, Morris says. She told Morris that David had been drinking again.
Morris cut off her oven and pulled out the cake she was baking. "Here we go again," she thought.
She found him slumped in the chair. She said, "David."
Then she saw the gun and the wound. "I just started screaming and screaming and screaming. I could hear screams and I didn't really think they were mine. They seemed like they were somebody else's."
The past Christmas season marked the second anniversary of David's death.
Linda Morris hopes that talking about his death can serve as a warning to other parents and perhaps save their children's lives.
"If it just hits home to them - if they would just realize how precious their children are to them - and how quickly they could be taken away."