Commenting in the wake of a double suicide at a Massachusetts gun range, Cathy Barber, a researcher with Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Injury Control Research Center, told the Boston Globe that such events are traumatizing but very rare.
Barber has analyzed suicides at public shooting ranges using records obtained from the National Violent Death Reporting System, a database maintained by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She found that only 51 occurred during the five-year study period, less than two-tenths of a percent of the suicides by firearm reported by the 16 states that submit records to the database.
“Some of them definitely seem to be opportunity-type events where the person is going to the range to gain access to a gun,” she said, in the March 7, 2016 Globe article.
She noted that gun ranges around the country have implemented policies such as requiring that people who rent guns be required to take a safety training course and be accompanied by another person at all times.
Read Boston Globe article: Suicides have prompted some gun ranges to change rules