Gun Violence Is Actually Worse in Red States. It’s Not Even Close.

"why is the Far West so safe with regard to gun homicide and so dangerous for gun suicides? Carolyn Pepper, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Wyoming, is one of the foremost experts on the region’s suicide problem. She says here too the root causes appear to be historical and cultural.

If your economic development is based on boom-and-bust industries like mineral extraction and mining, people come and go and don’t put down ties,” she notes. “And there’s lower religiosity in most of the region, so that isn’t there to foster social ties or perhaps to provide a moral framework against suicide. Put that together and you have a climate of social isolation coupled with a culture of individualism and stoicism that leads to an inability to ask for help and a stigma against mental health treatment.”