Most Texas gun deaths are suicides

There's an old and wise saying, "Never bring a knife to a gunfight." Perhaps a corollary to that adage should be, "Never bring a gun when you're fighting emotional demons." Reports News 8-Austin:

There are more suicide deaths by guns in the state of Texas than gun-related homicides. ... Suicides account for nearly 57 percent of the state's gun deaths. That’s compared to 41 percent who die by homicide.

To their credit, this data comes from an announcement that the Austin PD and the Suicide Prevention Council are teaming up for a public ed campaign on gun suicides.

Here's more evidence Texas underspends on mental health treatment compared to prisons and jails, where thousands of mentally ill offenders are anyway locked up. We're justifiably concerned with a killer shooting somebody else, but from a statistical perspective that's a smaller problem than suicides. So if the goal is to minimize gun deaths, why don't government spending priorities reflect that fact?

I think some of it has to do with the political strategies described in the last post, Governing through Crime. Modern politics overprioritizes "crime, and particularly the fear of it," while ignoring social problems that may actually take more lives and cause more harm.