Montgomery County bill would require gun shops to share suicide prevention info

Montgomery County Council President Even Glass introduced a bill on Tuesday that would require gun shops to provide customers with reading material on firearm safety and suicide prevention. FOX 5's Stephanie Ramirez has the story.

ROCKVILLE, Md. - Montgomery County Council President Even Glass introduced a bill on Tuesday that would require gun shops to provide customers with reading material on firearm safety and suicide prevention.

A similar measure is going back to court in Anne Arundel County in December, with a pro-Second Amendment attorney saying he’ll sue if Montgomery County does the same.

Council President Evan Glass’s Suicide Awareness and Firearm Education or "S.A.F.E. Act" would require the county’s around 77 gun stores to provide county health department-approved reading material on suicide prevent and firearm safety at each point of sale.

This comes during National Suicide Prevention Month, but proponents also say it has long been known that suicides make-up a majority of the country’s firearm deaths.

In Maryland, we’re told 42% of suicides are by firearm. What that currently looks like in the county is unclear, but a local official provided FOX 5 with the latest available dataset showing county, state, and country-wide suicide rates by firearm as of 2021.

FOX 5 stopped into Atlantic Guns on Frederick Road in Rockville, where similar style pamphlets are sitting on a side-table in the gun shop. A manager told FOX 5 they’ve been providing the material for a while.

The pamphlet discusses signs of suicide, who’s more at risk, suggests what type of firearm safes to purchase along with mental health and suicide prevention resource information.

Beata Stylianos, whose husband turned to a gun in 2012, told FOX 5 realistically, she can’t say whether the reading material would have saved her husband’s life, but she believes it could have helped because he was an avid reader.

Stylianos told FOX 5 her husband worked with cutting edge technologies to keep the country safe.

"I miss everything, and I don’t want – I don’t want a family member to miss everything like I’m missing just because we didn’t try," said Stylianos, now an activist with Everytown for Gun Safety.

FOX 5 asked the county leaders if they really think a piece of paper will help.

The pamphlets2, the county responded, could create a pause or create just one more moment to get help before following through with possibly harming themselves.

"There are members of this community and people all across the country who don’t want there to be any laws governing guns at all. They think the Second Amendment is sacrosanct and not one law or change is constitutional. I disagree. All of us here disagree, we think if we’re going to have a safe and healthy community, one has to be free from gun violence and this legislation is a step toward freeing us," Council President Glass told FOX 5.

"Firearms do not emit some sort of invisible vapor into the atmosphere that make people want to commit suicide, so the whole idea that firearms and only firearms dealers distribute the county’s suicide literature is a misnomer from the start," said Mark Pennak with Maryland Shall Issue. The group sued in Anne Arundel County after their county council passed a measure last year.

A judge sided with the county, not finding the pamphlets to be a First Amendment violation – that the material’s language is unbiased. Maryland Shall Issue appealed and expect to head back to court in December.

"The idea that you single out gun purchasers and gun dealers solely for this matter is compelled speech," Pennak said. "They’re forced to distribute it. They’re forced to display it and they’re forced to disavow it if they disagree with it, all these things are violations of the First Amendment."

FOX 5 asked whether gun shop owners were reached out to before introducing the legislation. Councilmember Glass said he’s happy to have that discussion at a public hearing planned for Oct. 10.

FOX 5 is also told the county will be footing the bill for this reading material, not gun shop owners.