“I don’t think that the gun had anything to do with it,” Davis said.
Yet, research shows that easy access to a firearm can be deadly.
“There’s a lot of factors leading to this epidemic, but the most important one is guns,” said Chris Marvin, who served for seven years as a U.S. Army officer and Black Hawk helicopter pilot in Afghanistan. He currently sits on the Everytown Veterans Advisory Council.
“It’s so clear that the gun is a leading reason why we have a suicide crisis.”
When people think about suicide among veterans, Marvin said, they tend to blame it on the trauma of combat. But many veterans, like Johnson, never saw any fighting.